How not to Photoshop

Ladies and gentlemen, the photo of Governor Doyle and the First Lady from the new DOT state highway maps. Try not to laugh at how terrible the photo composition is. It's so awkward and artificial, I'd swear this was a pull-down background at the Sears Portrait Studio.

Is it just me, or does it feel like Jessica was also photoshopped on top of Jim? I mean, given that pose, shouldn't he have his arm around her or something? Where does his right shoulder disappear to? And how can she contort her body in such a way that the whole left half of her body vanishes into his missing right arm?

Maybe we need to change it to "Lasee's Nuts"

Can someone please explain to me why all of a sudden, Frank Lasee is constantly talking to himself in his weekly columns? I mean, it's one thing to use a parenthetical for additional information (e.g. to briefly explain a term). But Frank's using these things to have a running conversation with himself (sometimes he makes jokes and occasionally the parentheticals are even longer than the sentences they are located in and when that happens, boy, is it ever funny!).

Some recent highlights...

"Paying for on-going costs with one-time money is dangerous because after the money is gone, the spending program is back the next year and costs even more. (Kind of like buying a cottage and paying the down payment with an inheritance. Next year, and all the years after that, there has to be income to pay the mortgage.)"

"The non-partisan Legislative Audit Bureau (they do good work, I wish we had efficiency audits like they do in Texas) found that the DNR often did not distinguish between temporary disturbances and permanent wetland losses."

"Create a new covenant program that makes promises that no one seems to know how much it will cost or where the money is going to come from (hey, who cares when the bills don’t come due for at least four years and it sounds great today)."

"Whether or not Joint Finance is going to take the new gas tax out of the budget remains to be seen. In the mean time, I think the new gas tax deserves a closer look for one main reason. Of all the things the Governor promised in this budget, this is the one that is most obviously not true (except maybe telling us that you can add tens of thousands of new recipients to Medicaid and that it won’t cost us a dime more)."

"Once you get past all that (you know, immutable laws of economics, history and the United States Supreme Court), it sounds like a good plan."

"The report includes an economic refresher showing that, if the no-pass-through feature stays, markets will adjust to the added cost and (they will ship our gas someplace else where they can make more money) and pump prices will rise."

So Frank, if you could just quiet the voices in your head for a bit, it'd be a big help to all of us. Thanks.

(now back to our regularly scheduled budget programming)

Quick hits on the Senate debate

- They're flying now. Unlike the Assembly, the Senate still appreciates getting home at a reasonable hour. And as items speed up, the debate becomes less interesting.

- Dale Schultz's rant against the hospital tax increase is I think the first coherent and well-formed speech I've heard from the Republicans since I started listening a few hours ago.

- Wow, how many times does Jon Erpenbach have to answer the same question from Mary Lazich? Twenty? Thirty?

- Nurse Judy is currently proving why the Senate Democrats are better off letting Jon Erpenbach do their talking. And why the hell is Dave Hansen sitting there looking so smug?

- Did Mark Miller just bitch-slap Republicans with the words of Adam Smith? Is that what I just heard?

- Thanks to WisconsinEye, I can pause state budget action and wait for Carol Roessler to stop talking. Then I can fast forward through all her remarks.

- Erpenbach just said "If it's good enough for us, it's good enough for our constituents." Republicans, that's the message you have to beat.

- Rationing on health care, Alberta? Oooh, the rationing boogeyman. Have you ever tried getting a referral to a specialist from an HMO? The entirety of the HMO system is based around rationing. Why is okay for a private provider to do it but not government?

- HAHA. Then Darling admits that she knows health care is the number one issue in the state, and then "ums" and "ahs" her way into saying that it's a "co-#1" with taxes. Nice try, there. Someone got off the the talking points on accident. Oopsie!

- Who is Alberta Darling to talk about "average" Wisconsin families? Has she LOOKED around her house lately? Wow, and then she goes into the typical "Wisconsin sucks, don't locate your business here" rhetoric.

- Someone really needs to allow calculators on the floor of the Senate. Mary Lazich sounds like she's just guessing at the numbers.

- I laughed out loud when I heard Ted Kanavas said something to the effect of "we need to treat this bill like it's the actual budget, because each of these provisions could be included after conference committee." Clearly, Ted Kanavas understands the negotiating skills of Assembly Republicans.

Don't you deserve the same health care as your legislator?

First, listening just now to Jon Erpenbach reading Scott Fitzgerald's statement from earlier this year asking the Dems where their health care plan is was hilarious. I guess the question now is where is Scott Fitzgerald's plan?

The Senate Dems were smart to create a universal plan that replicates the coverage that state employees get. It gives them the ability to say “we just want to give taxpayers the same kind of care that your elected officials have.” Run a poll asking whether or not voters think they deserve the same kind of care that their elected officials get and let me know what the numbers are. I’m guessing 85% will agree.

Then ask voters what they think if they can have this care and likely pay less for it than they’re already paying for their own insurance. Let me know how that comes back, too.

I’m not saying the Senate Dems’ plan is a good idea. I’m saying that politically, those two questions are going to override the boogeyman tactics that Republicans will break out. Republicans are going to go to the Chicken Little card and start talking about how gazillions of businesses are going to leave the state. They can’t talk about cost to individuals - most individuals with insurance would be paying less under the Dem plan.

The Republicans will try to scare everyone with talk of how their jobs will disappear. Meanwhile, Democrats will counter anecdotally, with one small business owner after another talking about how this bill would cost them less than their current plans, or help them to offer better insurance to their employees. They already tipped their hand at yesterday’s hearing. I hate anecdotal arguments but sometimes they’re effective.

Democrats are just going to say that they think everyone in Wisconsin deserves the same kind of care that their Republican legislators get. Unlike the Republicans’ attempts to discuss the effects of a payroll tax, “do legislators deserve better health care than me?” is a really, really easy question for voters to grapple with. The answer, overwhelmingly, will be “no.”

At that point, GOP leggies are in the uncomfortable position of defending their own great health care benefits - benefits that they barely pay for. Are guys like Mark Gundrum going to renounce their own dirt cheap health plans? I mean, taxpayers have paid for him to have a whole friggin’ litter of kids and he’s barely paid a dime for it.

I’m not going to argue the merits of what’s passing for a GOP health care agenda. Like I said, I think many of the ideas are great. But the GOP certainly hasn’t found a successful or compelling way to market those ideas. When people come up to them and say “what do you do about sick families that can’t afford premiums or save thousands of dollars every year in an HSA?”, the GOP still just stands there like a deer in the headlights. That’s a big problem, and one that Democrats are obviously trying to set the stage to capitalize on next year.

Someone else's thoughts on the health care debate

I'd hate to see this languish buried in the comments section on Owen's blog, so I'll share this anonymous contribution from his comments section here. It does a fantastic job of pointing out all the "choice" fallacies that conservatives try to trumpet in their arguments against government-funded health care.

I'm not saying a universal approach is the best approach. But the fact is, when it comes to health care, the "choice" that many conservatives think they're defending isn't really much of a choice at all. Even state employees only get to choose from of a handful of plans that are nearly identical, and that's probably more than nearly everyone in the private sector gets.

First, those of you who are complaining that universal health care will require you to pay for the poor decisions of others obviously don’t have a clue about how the private insurance you so love works. Hint: your private insurance is the same thing, just with fewer people. Insurance works by taking a large group of people (called a risk pool) and spreading the risk of liabilities over a large group of people. Your lard-butt coworker who smokes 3 packs a day and hasn’t ran since he was a toddler is having and will have his care subsidized by your health insurance premiums. Therefore, your complaint in this regard has no merit whatsoever because you’re already doing it.

Second, if you’re actually willing to take a look at the cost and the performance of our system vs. socialized systems in other industrialized nations and actually defend what we have, then I sincerely hope you’re not a business owner and you’re otherwise nowhere near any important fiscal decisions, because you’re supporting a system that does not perform as well but costs more money.

To do so is irrational and emotional, just like the argument about “liberty”. Here is a hint: you don’t have a lot of liberty in the current system either if you have private insurance. You take what your employer gives you and you accept the few choices that plan provides. It’s absurd to claim that people should seek an employer based on the details of its health insurance plan when a) more important for nearly everyone to a decision about a job is income, location, position, prestige, and opportunity for growth, and b) we generally do not have a lot of detailed information on what plans a prospective employer provides, and c) for a lot of people just getting a damn job in the first place, regardless of benefits, is of the utmost importance.

I sincerely invite any of you to visit the Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin Neonatal Intensive Care Unit sometime and spout off to those patients’ parents ought to go get a better job.

I say this not as a liberal, I despise liberals because they actually manage to be more emo than do conservatives, which is hard to believe. I say this as someone who is trying to be pragmatic. Whining about what the Bible says you should do is not serious policy debate, it does nothing to solve the problem. Get over your emotional attachments and fears and bring serious proposals to the table. Because it should be obvious to anyone that government-sponsored health care is an inevitability. Better we do it competently here at the state level before the feds take it over.

And for those who complain that government isn’t good at anything, remember most of you find the time to believe the government can create a cohesive state out of a country with artificial boundaries and three ethnic groups who’ve hated one another for only a couple thousand years or so. If government can do that, it can provide health care I’m willing to bet.

Friday Wrap-Up

• Word is the informal target for the Assembly Republican working groups looking for budget cuts is around $800 million - $1 billion. The Governor's budget rang in at just over $58 billion (excluding bond revenue), which means that the fierce fiscal hawks of the Assembly are trying to come up with a whopping 1.5% in cuts - and so far, they're mostly failing. There are some working groups in the Assembly that feel they shouldn't have to cut anything, some members have resigned from their working groups in protest, and still others have reportedly offered - get this - spending motions. Tuesday's closed caucus should be a real hoot.
  

• Central Wisconsin crazies are holding a rally next week to protest the President's immigration bill. My guess is that the rally will look something like this:

The group will also be protesting the Department of Tourism's new "Discover Wisconsin: Your Hmong Friends" campaign to increase tourism by residents of southeast Asian countries.

• Watch a high school kid completely own Bill O'Reilly:

• Finally, congratulations to George W. Bush for officially becoming the least popular president since Richard Nixon. He's blown by Carter (28%) and clearly has his eyes set on Nixon himself (23%). If he continues to push an immigration bill that pisses off the last 26% of people who support him, he'll probably get there in about a month. Mind you, I support some kind of immigration compromise (if it pisses Tom Tancredo and Nancy Pelosi off, it gets my support automatically), but even I can recognize that flipping the bird to your last remaining supporters is completely nuts.
  

Playground Budget Update

I'll give Greg Bump a much-needed break by filling you in on recent progress.

Senate Democrats have backed a dump-truck full of social programs up to the loading dock at the Risser Justice Center, and are using the underground tunnel to smuggle autism mandates, universal health care, and the QEO repeal into the Senate budget. Democrats know that by piling this stuff in, they enhance their bargaining position come conference committee.

Assembly Republicans can't make similar maneuvers without getting bawled out in the press and by interest groups - although I can think of one budget cut in the Speaker's office that would save taxpayers $10.62 an hour and would drastically improve government efficiency and state employee morale.

The AssGOP, meanwhile, has split up into working groups. Most of these working groups are headed up by staff who are working outside their interest area, if they specialize in anything at all other than the happy hour at Madison's. Word is that so far, Republicans have come up with approximately $185.00 in cuts.

Upon hearing that $185.00 was located in the budget, fiscal hawk Robin Vos immediately drafted a motion to use the $185.00 to purchase a Troy-Bilt® 2 Cycle Gas Trimmer for use by the Racine County Public Works Department. Word is that the draft will require the trimmer to be purchased at a store located in a village with a population of 4,322, according to the decennial census - thus continuing Vos' pattern of talking tough on taxes while slipping one pork-laden motion after another into the budget.

(Gee Robin, you don't think your colleagues notice your hypocrisy?)

With ship taking on water, Huebsch hires captain of Titanic

On Friday afternoon this gem got passed along to me by a number of readers:

______________________________________________
From: Rep.Huebsch
Sent: Friday, June 15, 2007 2:13 PM
To: *Legislative Assembly Republicans
Subject: Staff Changes in the Huebsch Office

Members and Staff:
As you know, after more than 10 years in the Huebsch office, Bob Delaporte decided to move on and pursue new opportunities. He will be missed and we wish him all the best.

On Monday, John Murrary (sic, with Delaporte gone, nobody was available to proofread) will join my office as an LTE. As most of you know, John has worked in state and local politics for many years, most recently as staff for Senator Dale Schultz. John will assist with our media efforts until a permanent press secretary is hired.

Mike Huebsch

Yes, yet another classic example of how tone-deaf Team Huebsch has become. They appoint John Murray, a guy who was loathed on a near-universal level during his stint with Dale Schultz, to "fill in" until Huebsch can convince someone else to take temporary employment in the Assembly Republican Majority.

Let's recall Murray's recent accomplishments as Chief of Staff to the former Senate Majority Leader. It was Murray's shrewd political mind and keen observational skills that helped to completely screw up TABOR beyond all recognition. It was his sage advice that helped get Senate Republicans thrown under the bus on the repeal of gas tax indexing. And then to put a cherry on that sundae, he and chief election screw-up Keith Gilkes managed to acquire a copy of the SSDC campaign plan and still lose all four contested seats.

Gee, big surprise that John Murray's still available.

Frankly, I doubt you could find anyone who worked in the Schultz office to defend the guy, other than maybe Todd Allbaugh, who's also not going to win any popularity contests. Many of his own officemates couldn't stand Murray. And that, therefore, makes him a prime choice to sit in the Speaker's office.

Like many other leadership staff, Murray is someone that everyone else sees as ascending through the ranks by virtue of ass-kissing and blind, unwavering loyalty - although we see how Delaporte's loyalty was rewarded, so maybe it's just the ass-kissing. Huebsch's decision making process these days is either too stupid or too brilliant for me to figure out.

Thus continues a tradition established by John Gard of bringing in from outside the building staff who were relatively bad at their jobs and disliked by their colleagues.

Not that Huebsch trusts anyone in the building anymore, but if one looks at the Assembly Republican caucus, no two members are getting more press or better press these days than Steve Nass and Steve Wieckert, and that's owed largely to the staff in those offices - people who understand what the media want and how to package stories and messages in a way that reporters will actually give a damn. Nass has quickly emerged in this budget cycle as the principled voice of fiscal conservatism. He's consistently on target without being a total whore on social issues, like some of his colleagues down the hall. Wieckert, meanwhile, has become the poster child for reasonable, rational conservatism, falling politically on the right side of nearly every major issue that has come along.

But instead, Mike Huebsch will give John Murray an opportunity that few have gotten: the chance to help sink another political majority. We here at the Playground wish John Murray the best of luck with that. We hope he can put down his damn Blackberry long enough to give it his very best effort.

And to Mike Huebsch, I'd just like to paraphrase the often-used words of Scott Jensen's press secretary, Steve Baas: You've clearly forgotten the first rule of holes, which is, when you're in one, stop digging.

“Talk radio is running America. We have to deal with that problem.”

Kudos to Trent Lott. It's good to see that at least some Republicans in leadership positions are figuring out the problem.

Talk radio sycophants make up about 20% of those who traditionally vote Republican in major elections. By catering to their political extremism, Republicans are losing more votes in the middle than they're picking up on the right. It's a sure path to an ideologically pure and politically impotent minority.

The obvious solution to the reciprocity rumble

Once again, the University of Minnesota is talking about ending reciprocity with the State of Wisconsin unless we give in to some of their demands. I, for one have had enough of the talking. It's time to settle this once and for all.

How? The answer is simple:



Bubble hockey. Plaza. Best of 7. UW Chancellor John Wiley and U of M President Bob Bruininks. If Wiley wins, Minnesota has to shut the hell up. If Bruininks wins, make Wisconsin kids pay Minnesota in-state rates at their schools.

Less talk. More bubble hockey. Do it.

Emergency Contraception Bill could be death knell for Republican majority

Some of you may have noticed that yesterday, Speaker Mike Huebsch referred Assembly Bill 377, the Compassionate Care for Rape Victims Bill, to Mark Gundrum's Committee of Death. Planned Parenthood has already taken note of the fact that there is no way Gundrum's committee will vote this bill out, and has commenced what will be many long, arduous months of Republicans being taken to the woodshed by the media and general public for bottling this bill up.

For those who have not followed so far, AB 377/SB 129 requires that hospitals make emergency contraception available to victims of sexual assault. In the interest of creating a bill with broad, bipartisan support, the bill doesn't require a hospital to provide EC to an individual who is already pregnant.

The bill is so broadly bipartisan that even the Wisconsin Catholic Conference has decided to remain neutral on the bill. And as we know, the leadership of the Catholic Church isn't exactly liberal on matters relating to birth control and abortion.

Because of this inclusive approach, SB 129 received 27 votes for passage, including Ted Kanavas, who is about as conservative as they come.

The bill is opposed by just two groups: Pro-Life Wisconsin and Wisconsin Family Action. That should come as no surprise. Both groups oppose birth control in principle, putting them way out of touch with all but 37 residents of Wisconsin who are of child-bearing age.

When polling data becomes available, I have no doubt that this will show up as an 80% issue among women, and Republican vulnerables simply cannot be on the wrong side of this one and not expect to get lit up like a Christmas tree in '08. Republicans siding with the most extreme pro-life groups in the state instead of siding with rape victims? Yeah, try that in a general and let me know how it turns out.

If the Republicans refuse to move it out of committee and bring it to the floor, you can be assured that the Democrats will attempt a pulling motion at some point. There will be a roll call vote on this bill. The Democrats will need 50 votes on the first try - just a simple majority - to pull the bill to the floor for a vote.

Now, some Republicans (the stupid ones) will tell you that it's just a procedural vote and it doesn't matter. To them, I would remind them of the words that their former colleague, Steve Freese, left them with last December when he said "don't let anyone ever tell you that procedural votes don't count." As you'll recall, Steve Freese took a procedural vote in Spring 2006 to prevent the Assembly from taking up an ethics reform bill he supported. That vote turned into one of the biggest issues in his race.

A procedural vote will matter, because in the eyes of the public, there's no difference between voting against a pulling motion and voting against the bill. After all, if you support the bill, why wouldn't you want to see it come up for a vote?

Let's assume that Bob Ziegelbauer can't be cajoled into voting to pull. He's been endorsed by PLW in the past. Let's also assume that Terry Musser, the Assembly lead, votes to pull, as do Jeff Wood and Dean Kaufert, who are both on the bill. None of the three are in such a strong position electorally that they can do what Freese did last year and get away with it. Additionally, none of them really owe anything to the present leadership team.

That puts us at 49 votes to pull. The Democrats need to find just one more vote to bring the bill to the floor. And you know what that means. Every Republican suddenly becomes the deciding vote.

So which Republican vulnerables want to take the risk of siding with the pro-life extremists instead of with victims of rape? Mary Williams? John Murtha? Lee Nerison? Brett Davis? Karl Van Roy (although Van Roy's pending retirement is one of the worst kept secrets in the building, we'll throw him on the list just in case)? Who wants to be on the wrong side of an 80% issue? Who wants to see hit pieces like "Mary Williams' vote could have singlehandedly given rape victims the protection they need. But instead she sided with extremists on a bill even the Catholic Church did not oppose."?

My hope here is that for the first time in ages, GOP leadership has actually thought this out, and the referral to Gundrum's committee is just the requisite pander that the GOP feels it has to make to those dingbats at Pro-Life Wisconsin. To their credit, PLW knows how to knuckle down on members. In some districts, they're pretty powerful. Mind you, their power is almost entirely focused in districts where the GOP has an overwhelming advantage already, and diminishes exponentially the further you get from Glenn Grothman's district, but we'll set that aside for now.

Here's the obvious escape plan.

Keep PLW happy by referring the bill to Gundrum's committee. He's a total zealot on pro-life issues and loves to procreate. I swear, Mary Matuska writes his name on her notebook and draws hearts around it. Gundrum will do what he is best at - block legislation that is supported overwhelmingly by Wisconsinites.

The pulling motion eventually comes, because Dems won't miss the chance to put GOP vulnerables in the hot seat. No vulnerable will improve his or her chances by voting against the pulling motion, because Joe Wineke and Jim Kreuser will be shoving it down their throats in hit pieces for six straight months going into the election. In every potentially contested race, voting not to pull will hurt the Republican candidate.

The pulling motion is made, and the Republicans go to caucus. At this point, leadership closes the doors and says the following:

"Look, we can't afford to not have this bill pass if we have any hopes of staying in the majority. The overwhelming majority of Wisconsinites support this bill, the Catholic Conference is neutral, Right to Life is on the fence, everyone is either neutral or in support except PLW. And our vulnerables are going to get thrown under the bus if they have to take a bad procedural vote on this.

We did what we told PLW we would do. We referred it to a committee where it had no chance of escaping. But this is a matter of conscience. Most of you support this bill, and many of you need the vote to take home to your constituents. So the pulling motion is a free vote. We assume that there will be more than enough votes to pull the bill. Accordingly, the vote on the bill itself is also a free vote. This is one where you need to vote your district."

They leave caucus, the pulling motion gets 60-65 votes, the bill itself gets 70 votes (maybe more) and the thing is ushered off to the Governor's desk to be signed into law. The PLW stalwarts in the caucus save face (they tried, after all), leadership saves face, the vulnerables save face, and Democrats lose a huge wedge issue in the fall.

And believe me, if the Republicans have a prayer of holding the Assembly majority in 2009 and blocking the tidal wave of BS that the Dems will put forward, Republicans need to get this issue off the table.

It would be smart politics on the part of the Republicans, which is exactly why I suspect it will not happen. Instead, they would probably try to be super clever, and wait for a day when a few Democrats are absent. Then Gundrum himself will move to pull the bill, convince the Republicans that it's just a pulling motion, and the vote will fail. Subsequently, any pulling motion would need two-thirds support, a threshold that would be much harder for supporters to meet. Republicans will lose another six seats and end up in the minority, where Huebsch and Gundrum will blame the bad performance on the war in Iraq... again.

Again, not even the Catholic Conference opposes the bill. You have to work pretty damn hard to find yourself to the right of Bishop Morlino on abortion. If the Catholic Church isn't going to threaten to excommunicate Republicans for voting in support, it's probably a pretty good opportunity for Republicans bridge out to female voters and independent voters and show them that they're not completely insane.

Keep an eye on this bill. If Republicans don't handle it just right, this game of electoral chess is about to end real fast.