The Ex-Presidents lose another member

CNN has a nice compilation of remembrances that honor our recently deceased former president, Gerald Ford. You can view it here. And of course, a few words from Chevy Chase, who launched his career in part by satirizing the President on "Saturday Night Live."

What follows are a few words from our recently departed President. It's the text of a Ford veto from 1974 that, while overridden by Congress, earns him my respect. Ford, unlike most of our current politicans, actually had the nerve to veto a bill that expanded veterans' benefits.

Any politician, Republican or Democrat, that has the guts to say no to any one of the Greedy 3 - farmers, veterans, or seniors - has my admiration. Time again, Republicans talk about fiscal conservatism, but then cower like a bunch of wimps when it comes to the Greedy 3 and give them whatever they want. Ford showed some backbone. Good for him.

Thank you for your service, Mr. President.

To the House of Representatives:

I am returning today without my approval H.R. 12628, a bill which would provide what I consider an excessive increase and liberalization of veterans' education and training benefits.

Instead, I urge the Congress to send me a veterans' education bill along the lines that I have proposed. By doing so, we can avoid adding another half billion dollar load to the already overburdened taxpayer. Failure to do so will mean that the Congress will in the aggregate--Federal pay deferral, Railroad Retirement and Veterans Education--add over one and a half billion dollars to the Federal deficit in 1975.

This bill which I am returning to the Congress provides benefits that are greater than those granted to World War II and Korea veterans. It would cost the taxpayers half a billion dollars more in fiscal year 1975 than is appropriate in view of the country's current economic circumstances.

The decision not to sign this bill has not been an easy one. But it is necessary if all of us are to operate with essential budgetary restraint. The Nation must reduce Federal spending if we are to stop the inflation spiral.

I have asked the Congress on previous occasions to join with me to hold down Federal spending and help whip inflation. In two important instances, the Federal pay deferral plan and the Railroad Retirement bill, the Congress refused to join with me and the result has added an additional one billion dollars to the Federal taxpayers' burden.

Veterans' benefits should--and can--be improved. I continue to support a responsible increase in education benefits for veterans. I again urge the Congress, as I have on many occasions, to enact a GI Bill providing for an 18.2 percent benefit increase rather than the 23 percent in this bill. Such action would be in keeping with the needs for fiscal responsibility while recognizing the Nation's special debt to our veterans.

Since the Vietnam-era GI bill first went into effect in 1966, the total of veterans' benefit increases enacted through 1972 have substantially exceeded the rise in cost of living. Not including the provisions of this bill, the basic monthly education allowance has increased by a $120 per month or 120 percent since 1966. This compares with an actual rise of 55 percent in the Consumer Price Index.

In addition to the 23 percent benefit increase, this bill extends entitlement for GI bill benefits from 36 to 45 months for undergraduates. I believe the present entitlement of four academic years is sufficient time to permit a veteran to obtain his baccalaureate degree and to enable him to adjust to civilian life.

In addition, the bill contains other objectionable features despite my urging that they be eliminated. It establishes a new direct loan program for veteran students which departs from the sound objective of providing student aid through one department--Health, Education and Welfare--rather than through various Federal agencies. A direct loan program is also inefficient compared to available guaranteed loan programs, which provide substantially more assistance to the veteran at less cost to the Federal taxpayer.

I am returning this bill with reluctance, but it is my earnest hope that the Congress will demonstrate its willingness to join the executive branch in taking the difficult actions needed to hold down spending by the Federal Government while being equitable with our veterans.

GERALD R. FORD
The White House,
November 26, 1974.

Note: H.R. 12628 was enacted over the President's veto on December 3, 1974, as Public Law 93-508 (88 Stat. 1578).

A tale of two Wards

I have to say, I'm not surprised but I'm a bit disappointed by Rep. Tamara Grigsby's grousing today about Ward Connerly's scheduled appearance on Tuesday before the Legislative Council Special Committee on Affirmative Action Policies.

I can appreciate her frustration at the invite-only nature of the hearing. However, lots of hearings are invite-only. Citizens, as always, are still free to prepare written remarks and have them distributed to committee members.

I think Grigsby's real beef is with the fact that the guest of honor is a black man who opposes affirmative action. I wonder if she'd be so outraged if the hearing were invite-only and the invited speaker was Michael Eric Dyson or Cornel West. I doubt she would be.

On another note, it'd be interesting to know who's paying for Ward Connerly to be here. Surely we remember how loudly conservative types carped about the money UW-Whitewater students forked over to host an equally controversial figure, Ward Churchill, in March 2005. Tax dollars weren't spent on Churchill's appearance. However, unless Connerly is footing the bill for his appearance out of his own personal generosity, someone's gotta be paying him for his time.

Are taxpayers paying for Connerly's expenses? If so, how much? And if not, then who?

What the rest of the country sees in TGT

Tommy might still be worshipped by some around these parts, but ask D.C.'s biggest political gossip about Governor-Secretary Tommy Thompson, and here's what it'll tell you:

Thompson was governor of Wisconsin, where he grew mutant transgendered deer, and then Bush made him the Health and Human Services secretary, where he told a $150 billion lie about the new Medicare scheme and engaged in regular conflicts of interest that profited his various companies and investments. In 2004, he quit to concentrate on putting radio-computer chips in people’s skin so the government can control them or even kill them at will.

Yeah, that's our former governor too.

Thanks for your service, Tommy. There's a good night out there, and I think all of us, conservatives, liberals, and everyone in-between, really wish you'd just go gently into it.

Oh, how ironic that sleeping on the job is back in the news...

A year ago today, I posted a brief report on the late-night activities (or inactivities) of certain members of the Wisconsin State Assembly. The post was so devastating in its effectiveness that within 24 hours, Assembly Republicans had already held a closed caucus in my honor and the calls for my head had begun. Even then, we could already sense the arrogance and lack of accountability on ethical matters that would come to be the Republicans downfall this November. Why stop playing Party Poker on the floor when you can just buy a privacy shield for your laptop screen, right?

So I must admit that, exactly one year later, I find all the histrionics about a couple of janitors in Milwaukee County napping privately to be a bit humorous.

Milwaukee County employees sleep on the job and they're held to one standard. Assembly legislators sleep on the floor, and they're held to a different standard. If the media are going to write about and show television footage of janitors dozing, I damn well expect to see Pat Marley, Steve Walters, and all their Press Room colleagues sitting in the press gallery on that first all-nighter with empty cans of Red Bull and pizza boxes strewn everywhere, eagerly waiting for that first legislator to fall asleep so someone can grab a picture and tell the story. If public employees dozing on the job is newsworthy, I damn well expect some consistency out of the Fourth Estate.

If you're a Milwaukee County janitor, here's what you've got to look up to in government. You've got state legislators sleeping on the job. County board members like Lee Holloway and aldermen like Michael McGee finding new ways to embarrass you every other week. Milwaukee police officers deactivating their GPS units with aluminum foil - that is, when they're not off sledding or beating Frank Jude to near death (allegedly).

In other words, you've got some terrible role models.

And some people talk like janitors catching a little shut eye is the biggest problem the public sector has ever seen? What the hell do you expect the people at the bottom of the totem pole to do? Face it, voters. You're not exactly inspiring public servants with your consistently alarming choices for public office.

Carol Owens? Re-elected. Sam Kerkman? Re-elected. Both by comfortable margins. To those of you who are actively suggesting that legislators shouldn't get sick leave, I would expect you to be equally aggressive about the notion of legislators sleeping through their job duties as well. They weren't fired, so maybe the public thinks a little shut-eye is okay?

And at least the janitors had some sense of shame, no matter how small. They weren't out sleeping on the proverbial steps of the courthouse, like your elected officials do. Leggies have no shame about it.

This whole thing reminds me of that legendary PSA we were all treated to back in the 80's...




"Parents" who sleep on the job will inevitably have "kids" who sleep on the job, and if you really want to improve accountability and work ethic in any workplace, public OR private sector, that's gotta start at the top. If a CEO has a reputation for being a lazy slacker but cracks the whip on others for not working hard enough, how much credibility do you think he has?

You've got leggies sleeping on the job, leggies charged with extortion and using public office to pad their wallets, leggies poking their heads in for five minutes on a Wednesday morning and then reminding their staff to check them off so they can get their $88 per diem, leggies using their staff as babysitters for their snot-nosed kids, and leggies campaigning the last six months of an election year while never in session and still collecting a full paycheck from the state while their employees are legally prevented from engaging in the same activities while on the same dime. What kind of message does that send?

Here's hoping that among the rule changes that Speaker Huebsch and Majority Leader Robson put forward this January is a "no sleeping on the job" rule - even if it means the Sergeant at Arms blowing an airhorn in people's faces at two in the morning. If people don't want to pay janitors to nap, they sure as hell shouldn't pay for legislators to do it either.

It probably shouldn't be funny, but it sort of is.

What's next? Wearing panties at the Teen Choice awards?

CNN - Lohan: I haven't had a drink in a week

And yet Lindsay Lohan also says she's been attending Alcoholics Anonymous meetings for a year. The math there is interesting, about as interesting as that one time a former press secretary for an Assembly Speaker was adamant in insisting to his colleagues that Wisconsin's debt was in the trillions of dollars.

Nobody understands a circus like a legislator.

And nobody's better qualified to run a circus than a guy who had to hold a gavel for nearly a decade and preside over 98 carnies on a regular basis.

Congrats to Steve Freese on what is perhaps the most fitting transition into a new career that any politician has ever found.

Something to think about.

I hope that you have had an opportunity to watch some of the coverage of this weekend's Nobel Prize ceremonies.

I wanted to leave you with one quote from the end of Muhammad Yunus' lecture. As I'm sure all of you know, Yunus was awarded half of the Nobel Peace Prize this year along with his business, Grameen Bank, for using microcredit to create economic and social development in his native Bangladesh.

We get what we want, or what we don't refuse. We accept the fact that we will always have poor people around us, and that poverty is part of human destiny. This is precisely why we continue to have poor people around us. If we firmly believe that poverty is unacceptable to us, and that it should not belong to a civilized society, we would have built appropriate institutions and policies to create a poverty-free world.

We wanted to go to the moon, so we went there. We achieve what we want to achieve. If we are not achieving something, it is because we have not put our minds to it. We create what we want.

What we want and how we get to it depends on our mindsets. It is extremely difficult to change mindsets once they are formed. We create the world in accordance with our mindset. We need to invent ways to change our perspective continually and reconfigure our mindset quickly as new knowledge emerges. We can reconfigure our world if we can reconfigure our mindset.

Yunus raises an interesting question. Have we failed to adequately and appropriately address the issue of global poverty simply because we, in developed nations, haven't bothered to create sufficient mechanisms to address the problem? Have western nations used the World Bank and the IMF to foolish throw money at corrupt governments that rarely spend their funds in a way that helps their nations to become self-sufficient?

Rather that simply suggesting that the answer is more money, are we making certain that our current contributions are being spent as wisely as possible? Or are our current policies regarding lending and giving in the third world more about our own interests instead of those who we are supposed to be helping?

By fighting poverty in the third world, and particularly in Muslim nations, we stand to greatly improve global security by reducing the susceptibility of those populations to religious extremism. Is it any coincidence that most nations where democracy has succeeded have been nations whose people had already attained a certain degree of material wealth?

To anyone who has come to doubt that one ordinary person and his ideas can make a profound differences in the lives of others, Yunus stands tall as a reminder that one person can have a profound impact on those he chooses to help.

Better yet, Yunus and Grameen stand as a reminder that perhaps the better way to get people out of poverty is not simply to give them charity, but to introduce the concepts of accountability and responsibility to the assistance they are given. And that we should be less focused on helping governments and more focused on helping people.

In other words, perhaps we're better off loaning the world's poor a cow instead of giving their government our surplus milk for free.

Sheldon speaks the truth

Gotta give credit to Rep. Sheldon Wasserman (D - Moving to the South Wing in two years) for his straightforwardness on the sick leave issue. Oh, and also pointing out that it's really easy to waive a minor benefit when you're loaded.

Said Wasserman:

“Some of my colleagues are trumpeting the news that they are giving up all of their accumulated sick leave. Unfortunately, it is not clear that a current legislator can irrevocably waive this benefit. If it is possible, I will be one of the first to sign the form, and if I cannot sign a binding form, I give the people of the 22nd Assembly District my word that I will not use this benefit. In the meantime, I urge my colleagues and the public to keep in mind that the prospect of not having health insurance coverage is frightening. It is easy for wealthy legislators and for those with outside jobs to waive the possibility of converting their unused sick leave into health insurance benefits; for many of my colleagues this may be a much tougher decision. That is why I think the focus should be on ending this practice from this point forward.”

Good for Rep. Wasserman if he doesn't want to take the benefit. But it seems clear that he recognizes the absurdity of lecturing his less-affluent colleagues about what they should or should not do with compensation they legally earned and are entitled to. That's just arrogant.

It's also a point some of his Republican colleagues seem to have missed.

Update: Rep. Gary Sherman also has a thoughtful and worthwhile read on the matter. And unlike much of what Sherman writes, it's somehow concise! Well, concise for Sherman.

Delayed outrage and other pigs at the public trough

I received a link to this article by a regular reader, and I thought it was so interesting that I'd share it with the group. (Thanks to "Too Much Coffee," whoever you are!)

According to the MJS:

Wisconsin lawmakers' $38,056-a-year salary, due to rise 3% in January, is just one component of the benefits package they receive.

Others include a sick leave bonus plan and credit for military service. The benefits can increase if a lawmaker wins appointment to a state agency, The Capital Times reported Monday.

The date on this article? April 9, 1996. That's right. The MJS was writing about this nearly 11 years ago, and nobody really cared.

Any legislator who tells you they didn't know about this benefit is either stupid or a liar, and I'm not sure either is really becoming of someone in public office. This article is pretty much your proof. You think that the leggies who were around for the sick leave bonus or the pension sweetener in the late 90's didn't know they were getting those benefits?

Most of their tales are similar to all of the sad, pathetic denials regarding the caucus scandal. "Oh gee, I didn't know how all of those helpers got up to my outstate district or who was paying them."

Nobody buys it, guys.

But as long as we're talking about benefits for former public employees, there's another group of people out there who fit that description: veterans. And their benefits are a hell of a lot more pricey than those of a bunch of retired public officials.

Said Ted Kanavas, "it’s ludicrous for people who are choosing to serve the public to receive a health benefit after their term service has ended." Sure, Ted. I'll go with that for now. And let's be honest. Whether you're a legislator, an agency employee, or a soldier, you're choosing to serve the public (we'll leave those drafted into the military out of the discussion for now). So why draw distinctions? The pride of serving one's state or country should be enough, right?

Am I being facetious? A little. But there's a point in there too. Why should I pay for 40 years of assistance to a retired, 30-year-old vet? Most of them are perfectly healthy and perfectly capable of paying for their own health care, college, property taxes, home loans, burial costs, or whatever other thing politicians want to give them for free next. Maybe some of our able-bodied vets should also step up like the Richie Riches of the legislature (Darling, Kanavas, and Ziggie, I'm looking at you) and voluntarily rescind all of their extravagant benefits too. Think about the role models they'd be! Think of the cost savings that could be had!

If this is all about cost savings, let's treat all former public employees the same. Doesn't matter if you earn your job, are elected, or join the military. Doesn't matter if you push a pencil or drive a tank. Get off the dole and pay your own way.

My take on how this will progress? Just like leggie pay raises did a few years ago. A couple of leggies gave back their raises and soon enough everyone forgot about it. Both houses will propose internal reforms to ensure that sick leave is better accounted for. And that will be that.

Kaufert to Doyle: Get Me the Hell Out of Here

On November 14th, I wrote about why Dean Kaufert should think about taking a cabinet appointment from the Doyle administration.
And according to the Spice Boys, there's at least one person who agrees with me: Dean Kaufert.

Woohoo!

For those who didn't read the article, I'll paraphrase Kaufert's response when asked about being fitted for his Team Doyle jersey:

"Would I be interested in a cabinet appointment? Yeah, sure I would. Maybe Tourism or Commerce. Or Revenue. You know, it wouldn't even have to be Secretary. I'd take Deputy Secretary. Division Administrator would be fine. But I can work up to it. No sense of entitlement. I'd be happy to start at Program Assistant. Anything, really. Just, please. Get me the hell out of the Legislature."

I hesitate to say it's a done deal, but it sure smells like a done deal at this point. So Kaufert leaves, and as a Democratic appointee, would probably remain silent in the race to choose his successor. Considering he only won by four points and is well-liked in his district, this is going to be an uphill battle for the Republicans if a special is held this spring. Especially since there's at least one Democrat who's got name ID, thousands of yard signs already printed, and pulled 48% of the vote against a eight-term incumbent. The Republicans, on the other hand, are flat footed.

Just like I congratulated Rich Zipperer on winning his race five months before he won it, I'm going to stick my neck out here and congratulate Dean Kaufert on his new gig as (insert Team Doyle position here). Way to get the last laugh, Dean. You were a smart legislator, and now you're showing that you're smart enough to know when to fold the hand and cash out your chips while you're ahead.

One more voice of reason heading for the exit. This session is only going to get better and better for the peanut gallery.