I'm With Him

I think James Wigderson spoke for many of us yesterday when he said the following:

I have a feeling my new addiction is going to suck me in worse than mid-season pro football. Wispolitics.com's Courtwatch Blog is following the Scott Jensen case blow-by-blow, witness by witness.

Indeed, methinks there are legions of political junkies, lobbyists, and Capitol staff who just keep a window open in the background on their computer all day and click reload every 15 minutes. For those looking for a newsreader feed, it seems to be available by clicking here.

I'm sure I speak for many when I thank Greg Bump of WisPolitics for his timely updates. I'm sure I'm also not alone when I say that many of us wish we were getting paid to sit over at the courthouse and do his job these days!

Okay, you got me.

It's official. Ragnar Mentaire over at I AM THE FORCE has successfully identified me.

Seriously though, what legislator would waste taxpayer dollars by devoting their staff's time and state resources to unearthing the identity of bloggers? The prospect would be laughable if not for the fact that I wouldn't put it past most of them. There is no small-minded, retaliatory fury greater than that of a legislator scorned or criticized. If only some of them showed the same zeal and committment towards TPA or health care reform...

Playground Reader of the Month: Gregg Underheim

Rep. Gregg Underheim (R - Oshkosh) commented on my last post, specifically my quip regarding the Republican health care agenda. You should all read his comments before proceeding. Underheim knows what he's talking about, and I'm flattered that he took the time to share his thoughts. He knows his stuff.

Underheim is right on the money when it comes to improving transparency in the health care system. Where else do we routinely purchase goods or services without having any idea what the cost is?

However, I would respectfully ask the Representative the following question. If you thumb through the newspapers, what is your leadership pushing hardest: health savings accounts, medical malpractice caps, or the transparency agenda? Unfortunately, the most significant element of the plan is often completely forgotten by legislative leaders, in part because it doesn't rack up as many points with special interest groups.

I looked through the January and February press releases on Dick Wheeler's website. Guess how many Republican releases I found specifically regarding health care legislation? One. It's a "kitchen table priority" for Senate Republicans, whatever that means. It also made the Assembly Spring Agenda release sent out in Green Bay. Mind you, it was listed below the Taxpayer Protection Amendment and another tax giveaway to businesses. Perhaps that indicates where the caucus' priorities are. If Republicans are really accomplishing something meaningful on health care, why aren't more of Underheim's colleagues talking about the issue?

While Underheim is correct to point out that there are market-driven improvements that should be made in order to increase transparency and restrain the growth of medical expenses, we should also recognize three facts:

1. There will always be individuals in any market-driven system that are unable to afford preventative medicine

2. Preventative medicine is cheaper than catastrophic medicine

3. Our government has already made a commitment to take care of many catastrophic medical expenses for the poor and the elderly.

You can think what you want about number 3, but it's not going to change anytime soon. And with that in mind, it makes infinitely more sense for the government to invest in number 2 for those individuals that fall under number 1. Programs like BadgerCare require investment now but save the state money in the long run.

I am a huge advocate of consumption taxes, so I have no problem with the concept of a tax-free health savings account. Hell, I'd prefer all savings be tax-free. But it is fundamentally misguided for Republicans to suggest that HSA's will somehow be a Godsend to the uninsured.

HSA's only work for people that actually have money left at the end of the month. For most lower and lower-middle income families, an HSA is absolutely worthless because there's no money left to save. Even an employer match into the HSA does little for them since they've got nothing to put up against the employer's funds. HSA's are fine, but let's be honest about what they do and what they don't do. They do virtually nothing to make health care affordable to those who can't access the system in the first place.

Medical malpractice lawsuits make up such an insignificant portion of health care costs as a whole that, in aggregate, it's hardly going to make a dime's worth of difference to consumers if monetary caps are in place. Unfortunately, lots of the rhetoric in this debate is nothing more than talking points from doctors and trial lawyers, two groups a little too vested in the issue to be trusted. In the studies I've read, it seems as though there is some correlation between malpractice premiums and availability of health care in rural areas. But surely there are other ways that government can ameliorate that situation other than a misguided, one-size-fits-all, we-know-better-than-a-jury approach to malpractice verdicts.

Ultimately, real reform requires everyone to acknowledge that our country is unlikely to stray from its blended system of health care delivery anytime soon. We're never going to get government out of the business of paying for health care for some Americans. We're also unlikely to move to a single-payer system to health care.

What we need to move this debate forward are more legislators like Underheim, guys who do their homework, ask good questions, value debate, and want to get things done. It's unfortunate that those qualities aren't as valued in politics as they should be. Leaders on both sides shoulder responsibility for the acerbic environment that promotes screaming and shouting from the peanut gallery of their caucuses instead of listening to the reasonable minds in their midst.

Underheim is leaving the Legislature at the end of the year, and that's a huge loss for Wisconsin. He's one of the good guys in a day when the good guys are becoming harder and harder to find. Wisconsin is better off for his service, and his presence under the dome will be sorely missed.

Bits and Pieces

Sometimes when I see something funny or stupid, I'll write a few sentences down and burrow it away for further development later. The last few days have been busy, so here's all my random, mostly undeveloped thoughts about recent goings-on:

What you get when you juxtapose two bad bills against one another: Eight-year-old kids climbing out of the booster seats and grabbing a rifle to go hunting with dad. Seriously, do you guys sit around at the Inn on the Park after session and scheme of ways to look dumb?

Another day, another pointless bill: Dave Travis is introducing legislation regarding the hold that banks put on debit card funds when purchases are made. Travis does not like the fact that held funds in excess of those spent may not be released immediately upon purchase. Apparently someone forgot to tell Travis that there's an easy way to remedy this problem that doesn't involvement government: use cash. If it's that big of a problem Dave, why don't you spend cash instead of using a debit card? Travis, like many Democrats and Republicans, is firmly anchored in the worst party of all: the Party of Government.

So what exactly did Chris Tuttle do when he worked for the Assembly Republican Caucus?: Xoff has a great post on Mark Green's Chief of Staff and his possible involvement in the sort of campaign-related activity that Green claims he had no knowledge of even when he was in Assembly leadership in the mid-90's. If anyone actually buys Green's story, leave me a comment and let me know. We'll start a running tally. I'll put the over/under at 7.

Robin Vos should stick to popcorn and Match.com and stop trying to micromanage the UW System: Really, Lady Caroline says it all. Read her fantastic post on the continued idiocy of certain GOP legislators who can't understand that the reason John Wiley makes a couple of hundred thousand dollars more than they do is that he is way smarter than they are.

Jensen Trial: Xoff writes that Jensen's insistence (so far) of moving ahead with a jury trial stands to jeopardize Republicans in November. Maybe Xoff is right, but to that I say this: what does Jensen owe his legislative colleagues? It was his machine that got most of them elected in the first place. Have any of them offered Jensen any kind of public support whatsoever? If Jensen got any worse treatment after building the empire his name would be Todd Rongstad. I, for one, wouldn't blame Jensen for blowing over the house of cards. After all, that's all it is at this point anyway: 60 members that can't develop a cohesive agenda, can't stay on message, and gets completely sidetracked by all its self-absorbed pet projects. The majority was lean and hungry in the mid-90's. Now it's fat, happy, and lazy, more concerned about bloggers than the fact that its health care agenda is nothing more than passing health savings accounts and malpractice caps for the eighteenth time and blaming the governor for vetoing them.

Really, doesn't this make you feel safer?: Thanks again to Governor Doyle and legislators for practically making Sudafed illegal. Having one mommy isn't enough, I need you guys to wipe my nose and straighten my collar before I leave the house too. I know people use the stuff to make meth, but I don't see how the alchemy habits of rural Wisconsinites is my problem. Hell, if meth is such a problem in western Wisconsin, let's annex it all to Minnesota. Everyone who lives there works in the Cities anyway.

School choice compromise: If a good compromise is one that leaves all parties a little angry, then the deal reached by Doyle, Gard, et al on MPCP caps is a great one. I think most Wisconsinites fall somewhere in the middle on the school choice issue. Unfortunately, the tradeoff for raising the cap was flushing more money down the SAGE toilet. SAGE is like Head Start - it's a feel-good program that parents like on the surface but in reality provides little bang for the buck. The key to academic success isn't individual attention - it's discipline. That's a trait parents of all economic backgrounds do a bad job of instilling in their kids these days.

A snake is a snake no matter what it's wearing: Frank Lasee hit the nail on the head when he called out the League of Women Vipers on Friday. Talk about a long time coming. You'd have to be nuts to participate in an LWV debate as a Republican. It's like walking into an ambush. The LWV is as partisan as it gets. The Vipers are always telling everyone that they "encourage informed and active participation of citizens in government." What they don't tell people is that they also want to do the informing. Be not fooled, the Vipers are an advocacy group dressed up as one that simply promotes civic responsibility. Good for Lasee for pointing it out. And heck, I'll go one further and praise Lasee some more. Even if we don't all agree with him all of the time, at least Frank Lasee stands for something and isn't afraid to call it like he sees it. If nothing else, at least give him credit for that.

Let's Talk About Sex

Today on the playground, we're going to talk about how sometimes you can take two awful legislative proposals and combine them into a colossal orgy of stupidity that better suits the needs of both authors.

Here are the contestants:

Assembly Bill 784, relating to: a mandatory term of confinement and the maximum term of imprisonment for certain child sex offenses and providing penalties. Author: Scott Suder

Senate Bill 568, relating to: the county of placement for persons on supervised release, creating a tax on adult entertainment businesses, providing grants for transitional release facilities, requiring the exercise of rule-making authority, and making an appropriation. Author: Tom Reynolds

Jessica's Law is quite possibly the biggest piece of feel-good legislation since the last time we gave something away to veterans or farmers. Its author, Scott Suder, hates taxes and hates laws. He pretty much hates everyone but this woman, and he maybe even hates her now. But Suder thinks the state should commit future outlays of hundreds of millions of dollars annually to incarcerate sex offenders regardless of their ability to be rehabilitated or their likelihood of reoffending.

The dirty little secret is that there probably aren't any more sex offenders today than there were 20, 30, or 50 years ago. The only difference is that society doesn't accept their behavior anymore. We don't cover for our perverted Uncle Jimmy. Truthfully, anyone over 20 probably grew up in a neighborhood with at least one sex offender and probably had no idea that was the case. Most of us turned out okay.

However, nothing sounds better to a rural Republican legislator than the prospect of prison building. It's the only kind of economic development most of their districts see. Stanley, New Lisbon, Supermax. See a pattern? All in rural Republican districts. Spending an extra half billion on education would be a colossal waste of money, but spending it to lock up a few perverts who may or may not reoffend is, well, why, it's important to public safety, dammit.

Meanwhile, in the other chamber, Tom Reynolds has introduced another kooky piece of legislation, one that would impose a 12 percent sin tax in tax on items sold in porn shops. The funds would be used to construct facilities to house sex offenders in "remote areas." Hey, Milwaukee County... the rest of us don't want your friggin' sex offenders any more than you do.

So Tom Reynolds wants to ship sex offenders out of southeast Wisconsin and Scott Suder wants to incarcerate them all forever. That'll take another 9,000 or so prison beds over the coming years. Hmmm... what to do...

Got it.

Surely porn is an inelastic commodity. It doesn't matter level what you tax porn at - people will buy it. It's not like they can go online and find porn anywhere. Online porn can only be accessed on one computer in Wisconsin and it's locked up in a science classroom at Cedarburg High School.

So here's what we'll do. We'll float the porn tax at whatever level is necessary to raise the money needed to house all of Suder's new prisoners. Mind you, in 25 years, we'll need $233 million annually to house them in-state. But that's fine. I'm sure people won't mind paying an 8000% tax on Back Door Sluts 9, the single most vile, twisted, dark piece of porn ever made.

Of course, we need someplace to put all of these prisoners, and I've found just the economic sinkhole to do it. We're going to construct a high-rise incarceration facility just north of the Highway 29 bypass in Abbotsford. It's obviously perfect. It's right on the border of the Bermuda Triangle of Wisconsin, formed by Interstates 39 and 94 and State Highway 29, a rural area where nobody in their right mind would dare venture, let alone live. I'm sure that the legislator who represents Abbotsford won't have a problem with it.

Reynolds' bill is stupid because it will simply drive even more people into buying their pornography online, where the state gets NO tax revenue from it. Suder's bill is stupid because it's of the mindset that cost is irrelevant when it comes to issues of public safety. But put them together and you get something that's almost passable in terms of public policy.

Almost.

Per Diem Piggies

That's right, the annual Per Diem rankings are out. Once again, the Assembly and Senate rankings bear out some interesting points.

Legislators are given laptop computers for use by the Legislature. They can connect to the state's network from those computers while at home. They can establish a phone line at their residence for legislative work and bill it to the state. They can also bill a cell phone to the state provided it's used for legislative business. Save for session days, committee hearings, and budget work, there's little excuse for an outstate legislator to ever be in Madison. Ever. But dangle the prospect of $88, tax-free, in front of their snouts, and many of them just can't resist.

To save you from mining through the data, I'll present some of the highlights (and lowlights) of this year's rankings.

• Marlin Schneider once again proves to have the biggest snout of all. We're not sure what else Marlin has learned during his lengthy legislative tenure, but he sure has learned how to game the system. Everyone inside the Beltline knows that Schneider has lived in the state capital for ages and commutes to the Capitol from his home in Madison. However, Schneider continues to claim per diem as though he's actually living in Wisconsin Rapids. The difference? Well, look at it this way. Fellow Dane County resident Joe Parisi took $6,688 in per diem for 152 days of work. Schneider took $13,464 for 153 days. That sound you hear is Wisconsin taxpayers getting screwed out of $6,800 each year for decades. Gov. Doyle could pay for nearly all of his State of the State spending projects if only Marlin would give back the money he doesn't really deserve.
  

• Speaking of Dane County representatives, Gary Hebl's favorite constituent, John Gard, clocked in at 103/$9,064. Yeah John, you're from Peshtigo. We know.
  

• Donna Seidel (140/$12,320) and Joel Kleefisch (133/$11,704) deserve our scorn for being the prime porkers of the freshman class! You're rubbing shoulders with veteran hogs up there!

• Joan Ballweg deserves credit not only for being a promising freshman legislator but also for showing a remarkable display of fiscal restraint when compared to some of her colleagues. While Ballweg lives in Markesan, she claims only the $44 extended to Dane County legislators. Ballweg's frugality saved Wisconsin $4,532 last year. Way to go, Joan. Here's hoping you can convince a few of your colleagues to practice what they preach as well Maybe you can start with your senator, Luther Olsen (146/$12,848), who finished third on the Senate side to Dave Zien and Roger Breske.

• While he's sometimes a target here on the playground, thanks to Tom Reynolds (108/$4,752) for also employing Ballweg's strategy. Of course, he's now wasting all of that savings on a unique arrangement through which conservative wacko J.J. Blonien receives $19,000 a year plus benefits to work from home. Why exactly Blonien is getting paid to watch The View is beyond me. So when all is said and done, Reynolds actually loses a point on this one. He just can't do something right without completely screwing something else up.
  

• Congrats to Mark Miller (48) and Dan Kapanke and Polly Williams (62 each) for billing the fewest days to the state.

• Terry Musser and Mark Pettis billed a combined 291 days to the state, though we're not sure what for, exactly.

• TABOR... er, Wisconsin Taxpayer Protection Amendment advocates Jeff Wood (139/$12,232) and Frank Lasee (127/$11,176) can't manage to get out of the top third of Assembly porkers. Those leather office chairs in Madison sure are comfortable! Funny how those who talk so loudly about downsizing Wisconsin's government are busy supersizing their paychecks at the same time.
  

• Jim Kreuser claimed only 82 days, though as Assembly Minority Leader, he's working a lot harder than some of his colleagues much further up the list.

Readers, want to do something fun and interesting? Call your legislator and ask them how long they require themselves to stay at work before taking their per diem. Because some of them literally drive in to the Capitol, visit their staff for five minutes, and count that as work. A few of them don't even bother to leave their vehicles, as though merely waltzing onto the Capitol grounds in their car entitles them to their money.