A deeply unappealing decision

Busy couple of weeks, including moving to a new apartment. Good to be back.

So, Wisconsin politics are less fraught than they were when I first started this blog, but only because I started the blog during a time of quite unprecedented fraughtitude; things remain less than collegial in the halls of Madison, the moreso now that the governor's race is heating up for round 3: this time not with Tom Barrett!

There are a number of things going on that could affect that race (in particular, the long-simmering John Doe investigation which has been tied up in highly technical procedural knots for weeks, resulting in some supremely uninteresting wire stories. My take: I think Walker and co. truly believe that their reciprocal backscratching with 3rd parties like club for growth met the letter of the law, and that they wouldn't recognize the spirit of the law if it attempted to gnaw off their sexual organs of preference). While there are ongoing sideshows regarding reproductive rights and gay marriage, the main thrust of this election seems to be economic. The Walker camp argues that they have balanced the budget and made life easier for local governments to do the same and that the state has added 100K+ jobs under his tenure. The camp of his opponent, Mary Burke, counters that he balanced the budget on the backs of public workers and recklessly cut tax revenues, that Wisconsin lags all the surrounding states in job creation, and that in any case, he had promised 250K+ jobs in his first term. The Walker camp counters that she was commerce secretary under previous Democratic governor Jim Doyle and therefore must be responsible for the crushing deficits and highly unpopular chicanery undertaken to resolve them seen during his tenure. The Burke camp counters that he's a doo-doo head, etc., etc.

Anyone who was around when I first started blogging knows my feelings about Walker. They've not changed. But despite my pronounced antipathy toward him and his, I'm finding it hard to get a lot of enthusiasm built up for this election, because Burke is an abysmal candidate, with no more integrity, decorum or competence than Walker.

How can we fix this?

I'm going to start by establishing a pair of basic premises, which I hold so staggeringly self-evident as to need no defense or articulation: the current government shutdown is bad, and the current government shutdown is the Republican Party's fault.  If you disagree with either of these foundation arguments, you're not going to get a lot out of what comes after. You have been warned.

Of course, I could get a lot more specific about the second argument.  Instead of blaming the Republican Party, I could blame those 80ish Republican representatives that signed the infamous letter supporting the shutdown ploy, who seem most in tune with the Tea Party zeitgeist.  I could blame Sen. Ted Cruz, who whipped them into a frenzy and seems to be the source of their initial deadlock-breaking strategy (fund only those parts of govt. that we like and then look surprised when the Senate laughs in our faces).  I could blame John Boehner, who makes the decisions about what gets a vote in the House and therefore has the power at any moment to permit a vote on a 'clean' budget resolution.  He has not, either (charitably) to avoid a civil war in the party going into the debt limit hike, or (cynically) to prevent them from booting him from the Speaker's chair.  But what all 3 of those options have in common is that they act under the aegis and with the apparent blessing of the Republican party, so that's where the blame can most reasonably be stuck.

When Congress last shut down the government, the Republican party suffered for it.  The next two election cycles eroded their ranks and bumped Bill Clinton handily to a second term.  If one looks at opinion polls today, one might expect the same outcome: Republicans shellacked, House leadership rebuked, Obama and the Democrats strengthened.  And maybe this will happen.  One certainly may hope.  But the funny thing is, House Republicans can see all the same national polling data that the rest of us can, and they aren't budging.  Why?

Find out ... after the jump!

Notes on Wisconsin Politics

In case I haven't previously mentioned it, I am a Wisconsinite, at least for the time being.  Today we interrupt your scheduled programming to bring you some musings on the current state of the charlie-foxtrot that is our state government.

The latest news: No sooner does the Government Accountability Board certify the recall petitions against a handful of state senators, but one of them (Pam Galloway, who represents my district), resigns.  She cites multiple family health crises as her reason, and insists that she isn't quitting because of the recalls and that she would have won anyway.  Maybe, maybe not, but the timing is certainly fortuitous, and I could easily see how for an enthusiastic, dedicated public servant (which I think Galloway probably was, although I'm sure her detractors would immediately question to whom she was dedicated), already faced with highly stressful personal circumstances, news that your district has decided to force you into a recall election might be the straw that breaks the camel's back and/or determination.  I wish her the best, but I can't say I'm sorry to see her go, especially since her absence gridlocks the senate and makes it all the more likely that local Democratic representative Donna Seidel will bag the seat.

So that was exciting, and today's news was even better: apparently jealous of being left out of the party, WI conservatives are launching some recalls of their own ... against themselves.  That's right; in addition to collecting signatures against Sen. Bob Jauch, D-Poplar, northwoods conservatives are trying to recall Sen. Dale Schultz, R-Richland Center.  Every liberal activist in the state is giggling, I'm sure.

The reason for the recall is a bit piddly, although God knows enough fuss has been made over it.  To summarize for non-Wisconsinite readers: a Florida company wanted to open an iron mine in northern WI, but first they wanted a timetable set for the currently open-ended approval process by the WI DNR.  Which I think is perfectly reasonable; they're not going to invest time or money until they at least know how long they're going to be waiting.  State Republicans whipped up a bill to simplify the appeals process and touted it as a big job-creator; Democrats and conservationists complained it went to far.  The key vote came down to Schultz, who was not appeased by the concessions Republican leaders made for his support and scuttled the bill; the company has since given up on the plan.  I've not been paying much attention to the nuts and bolts of this story (because, regardless of the stakes, arguing the minutae of mining approval regulations sounds like no kind of interesting that I know of), so I can't say who, if anyone, I think is in the right.  I just don't care enough.

But apparently some people do, leading to this recall effort.  I think it's silly, and I think that - even in districts that lost potential jobs because of this - nobody is going to rile up enough fuss over mining regulations to overthrow an incumbent official.

What was interesting to me is something my dad said while discussing this with me and Granddad this afternoon.  He said that this is what he was afraid of when the recall hullabaloo got started: that every vote would be grounds for a recall, and we'd be forced into a constant election season.  The only solution he saw was to change the recall mechanic to make it harder for frivolous crap like this to get off the ground, and if we can't manage to do redistricting in a non-partisan manner, I don't think there's much chance of doing something about this; the only solution I see is for Wisconsinites to grow up, which won't be happening any time this election cycle, methinks.

In the mean time, I can't wait to see what turns up next.

For the record (and here's the part where I'm actually testing out an opinion): while I'm all for recalling Walker, and signed the petition accordingly (although my signature will probably be disqualified since I wasn't registered to vote at the address I was living at the time), I think the rest of the recalls, Republican and Democrat alike, are essentially frivolous.  Walker has shown an ongoing pattern of running roughshod over opposition points of view in pursuit of an agenda that doesn't even pretend to be about the best interests of the state, of which the collective bargaining law is only the most blatant example.  He is a disaster and needs to go.

But the others?  Even those who supported the collective bargaining hackjob, with which I vehemently disagree?  Not really.  Single-issue voters are bad enough; single-issue elections are a joke.  While I have no love for the Fitzgeralds and their ilk, they are merely the henchmen who enact the leader's will.  If an issue needs to be determined by a public vote, we have a mechanic for that. It's called a referendum.  That, and the next scheduled general election, is the appropriate venue for rage about collective bargain, mining regulations, and who-the-devil-knows what else.  If I'd resided in a district that mounted a recall election last summer, I would have voted against it no matter who was being recalled.

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P.S.  A couple of the posts that I never got around to posting, and have now shelved probably for good, were about the collective bargaining law, the fooferaw around it, and why it made me unexcited to teach in Wisconsin.  I decided to scratch them partly because they're no longer even remotely timely; partly because it's probably not wise, even with my full name removed from this profile, to complain about teaching in a state while applying for jobs in that state; but mostly because it really doesn't matter: I need a job, and the chances that I'll be in a situation where I get to pick between otherwise comparable job offers in WI and another state is vanishingly small.  If I HAD posted on that topic, however, I would have another point to add: Wisconsin teaching licensure is absolute crap.  It requires more steps and demands jumping through more hoops than any of the other applications I've filled out, and it gives you less in return: a one-year non-renewable license that requires me to take another test, possibly further coursework, AND go through the application process again before they make it even pretend-official.  By contrast, Minnesota's licensure application was so simple that I was embarrassed to have taken as long as I did to get around to it.  The more I think about it, the more MN seems like the best-case scenario for job hunting.  We'll see how that goes.

P.P.S.  How bout this? Two posts in quick succession, and only a day or two out of date at that?  Not too shabby.  Let's see if this keeps up.