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!
Monday, October 14, 2013
Saturday, September 28, 2013
Thoughts on fitness
There was a very short period in my life, probably no more than a few months, that I could touch my toes.
It was right at the end of my senior year of high school. By that time, I had long since dropped away from any sort of organized sports, and the only semi-consistent form of exercise I got was going on walks with my mom. Around this time, for reasons I could not hope to reconstruct today, I started working out a little bit before bed. Nothing fancy - some push-ups, some sit-ups, and some stretching - but it was something, and unlike so many other little initiatives, I stuck with it. I kept it up nightly or nearly so for several months, and was quite surprised when one evening, while performing the venerable sit-and-reach stretch, I was able to snag my fingers on my toes.
This was unprecedented for me. When we did the sit-and-reach tests in elementary school P.E., I couldn't even reach the end of the board. To be sure, I have some natural disadvantages at play - long, long legs and not a lot of torso to go with it - but I also just flat-out wasn't flexible. And yet now I could touch my toes. It wasn't easy, and it wasn't fun, but I could do it. And over the ensuing weeks, it got easier and easier.
It couldn't last, of course. Shortly after that, I shipped off to college for the first time. I was far too self-conscious to perform my nightly routine in front of my roommates, or out in the lounge where anyone might walk past (although I did once pass another girl doing some stretches, which I remember only because of my vague sense of 'oh, I guess it isn't that weird after all' that failed to translate into any actions). Our dorm was far from the campus athletic facilities, and I think I would have avoided them anyway out of a misplaced disdain for athletics and the meatheads that practice them. So I just stopped.
I mention this because this stands out in my memory as my peak of physical fitness. I doubt it actually was, since I had very little since of dietary self-control and was not likely getting such an enormous payoff from those walks, but it was the one time I can remember setting out to accomplish something relating to my physical fitness and then seeing actual results. I feel proud of that little nightly routine and the small but measurable gains that I accomplished thereby. After that, aside from occasional walks with my ladyfriend and, during the summers, playing racquetball and reading on the exercise bikes at the YMCA, I allowed my physical fitness to languish.
At several points during my not-very-pleasant year teaching in Iowa (more to come on that), my mom suggested that I find a local gym or the YMCA, and even offered to pay for my membership. At one point, a mental health professional I was consulting recommended the same. I didn't, largely because I felt too much guilt about all the other things I was supposed to be doing to add something else to feel guilty about not doing to the list. Perhaps if I had, some things would have turned out differently. Perhaps it just would have added to my stress. Who knows. It wasn't until mid-August, when I finally squared away my last responsibilities for my former employer, and made the decision that I would not be moving away from home again until I had some form of employment lined up, that the pressure of things I was supposed to be doing finally relaxed and I experienced a spurt of the highest productivity I'd had in years, sorting and catching up on paperwork, tying up loose ends, plotting out my finances - and signing up for a Y membership. (And giving thought to blogging once again, as it so happens.)
I'm still struggling a bit with what exactly my fitness goals are. Do I want to lose weight? Well, probably; I'm well within the healthy range for my bmi, but I definitely have some mass on the front of my torso that doesn't need to be there. Oh, so it's about looking better? Well, probably; I certainly wouldn't object to being a little bit more alpha-masculine. At the same time, though, I have a deep and abiding contempt for the sort of institutionalized vanity that characterizes America, and am much more interested in health for the sake of health than for looking healthy. Oh, so it's about overall fitness? Strength? Endurance? Flexibility? Well, probably ...
This has led to a rather scattershot routine; when I go to the Y, which is averaging 2-3 times per week, I start with some stretching (in which I fall at least 5 inches short of my toes), followed by some time on the various weight machines (chest press, seated row, leg press, bicep curl, and some weird thing that involves twisting your lower body with the sides of your abs, mostly ), followed by 20-30 minutes on one of the bikes, where I set it to cardio (not fat-burning) and generally run it at ~120 RPM. (When I first started in August, I was lucky to break 90; this is another case where I think I can see measurable results from a self-motivated fitness effort.) I'm still experimenting with different things, figuring out what looks useful and what doesn't. I worry that without a particular goal(s) to work toward, I'll lose interest and fade out over time, but so far it seems to be working, and eventually I'll probably find something to work toward.
There are other ways to exercise than at a YMCA, and exercise is only a part of fitness, of course. I don't think I eat a terrible diet (although they really should have built that Culver's further away from my home, dammit), but neither do I eat a particularly healthy one - lots of pasta and other carbohydrates and relatively lean meats, but not a huge amount of fruits or veggies. Something to work on, I suppose.
I have been blessed by nature and happenstance with an ectomorphic physique that does not go out of its way to entrap calories, a marked lack of defects or early predispositions to non-communicable diseases, and a household that has never normalized the consumption of overprocessed snack food as a substitute for actual meals (although it's getting a little extreme; if Mom actually follows through on her plan to make chocolate chip zucchini cake, I may be forced to drastic measures). And these factors have prevented years of benign neglect from causing dire or permanent consequences, like diabetes. I also don't necessarily think I have a physique particularly disposed towards athleticism - not a body builder, not a soccer or football standout, not even particularly a runner - and I don't feel a competitive urge to become more so.
But I know that come 40 or 45, some of those natural factors will stop working for me and start working against me. And more than that (because 'do this so it will help you when you're 40' is a pretty crappy motivational speech to a 24-yr-old), I miss being able to touch my fully extended toes. I miss the feeling of accomplishment that comes from making a change to one's own body and seeing it take shape. What those changes will or should be, I have not yet determined, but after a year characterized mostly by feeling a distinct lack of control over my own life, it's nice to start to see some concrete evidence that there are still things within my control, and that it benefits me more to invest in the things I can change than to fret about the things I can't. So that's cool.
It was right at the end of my senior year of high school. By that time, I had long since dropped away from any sort of organized sports, and the only semi-consistent form of exercise I got was going on walks with my mom. Around this time, for reasons I could not hope to reconstruct today, I started working out a little bit before bed. Nothing fancy - some push-ups, some sit-ups, and some stretching - but it was something, and unlike so many other little initiatives, I stuck with it. I kept it up nightly or nearly so for several months, and was quite surprised when one evening, while performing the venerable sit-and-reach stretch, I was able to snag my fingers on my toes.
This was unprecedented for me. When we did the sit-and-reach tests in elementary school P.E., I couldn't even reach the end of the board. To be sure, I have some natural disadvantages at play - long, long legs and not a lot of torso to go with it - but I also just flat-out wasn't flexible. And yet now I could touch my toes. It wasn't easy, and it wasn't fun, but I could do it. And over the ensuing weeks, it got easier and easier.
It couldn't last, of course. Shortly after that, I shipped off to college for the first time. I was far too self-conscious to perform my nightly routine in front of my roommates, or out in the lounge where anyone might walk past (although I did once pass another girl doing some stretches, which I remember only because of my vague sense of 'oh, I guess it isn't that weird after all' that failed to translate into any actions). Our dorm was far from the campus athletic facilities, and I think I would have avoided them anyway out of a misplaced disdain for athletics and the meatheads that practice them. So I just stopped.
I mention this because this stands out in my memory as my peak of physical fitness. I doubt it actually was, since I had very little since of dietary self-control and was not likely getting such an enormous payoff from those walks, but it was the one time I can remember setting out to accomplish something relating to my physical fitness and then seeing actual results. I feel proud of that little nightly routine and the small but measurable gains that I accomplished thereby. After that, aside from occasional walks with my ladyfriend and, during the summers, playing racquetball and reading on the exercise bikes at the YMCA, I allowed my physical fitness to languish.
At several points during my not-very-pleasant year teaching in Iowa (more to come on that), my mom suggested that I find a local gym or the YMCA, and even offered to pay for my membership. At one point, a mental health professional I was consulting recommended the same. I didn't, largely because I felt too much guilt about all the other things I was supposed to be doing to add something else to feel guilty about not doing to the list. Perhaps if I had, some things would have turned out differently. Perhaps it just would have added to my stress. Who knows. It wasn't until mid-August, when I finally squared away my last responsibilities for my former employer, and made the decision that I would not be moving away from home again until I had some form of employment lined up, that the pressure of things I was supposed to be doing finally relaxed and I experienced a spurt of the highest productivity I'd had in years, sorting and catching up on paperwork, tying up loose ends, plotting out my finances - and signing up for a Y membership. (And giving thought to blogging once again, as it so happens.)
I'm still struggling a bit with what exactly my fitness goals are. Do I want to lose weight? Well, probably; I'm well within the healthy range for my bmi, but I definitely have some mass on the front of my torso that doesn't need to be there. Oh, so it's about looking better? Well, probably; I certainly wouldn't object to being a little bit more alpha-masculine. At the same time, though, I have a deep and abiding contempt for the sort of institutionalized vanity that characterizes America, and am much more interested in health for the sake of health than for looking healthy. Oh, so it's about overall fitness? Strength? Endurance? Flexibility? Well, probably ...
This has led to a rather scattershot routine; when I go to the Y, which is averaging 2-3 times per week, I start with some stretching (in which I fall at least 5 inches short of my toes), followed by some time on the various weight machines (chest press, seated row, leg press, bicep curl, and some weird thing that involves twisting your lower body with the sides of your abs, mostly ), followed by 20-30 minutes on one of the bikes, where I set it to cardio (not fat-burning) and generally run it at ~120 RPM. (When I first started in August, I was lucky to break 90; this is another case where I think I can see measurable results from a self-motivated fitness effort.) I'm still experimenting with different things, figuring out what looks useful and what doesn't. I worry that without a particular goal(s) to work toward, I'll lose interest and fade out over time, but so far it seems to be working, and eventually I'll probably find something to work toward.
There are other ways to exercise than at a YMCA, and exercise is only a part of fitness, of course. I don't think I eat a terrible diet (although they really should have built that Culver's further away from my home, dammit), but neither do I eat a particularly healthy one - lots of pasta and other carbohydrates and relatively lean meats, but not a huge amount of fruits or veggies. Something to work on, I suppose.
I have been blessed by nature and happenstance with an ectomorphic physique that does not go out of its way to entrap calories, a marked lack of defects or early predispositions to non-communicable diseases, and a household that has never normalized the consumption of overprocessed snack food as a substitute for actual meals (although it's getting a little extreme; if Mom actually follows through on her plan to make chocolate chip zucchini cake, I may be forced to drastic measures). And these factors have prevented years of benign neglect from causing dire or permanent consequences, like diabetes. I also don't necessarily think I have a physique particularly disposed towards athleticism - not a body builder, not a soccer or football standout, not even particularly a runner - and I don't feel a competitive urge to become more so.
But I know that come 40 or 45, some of those natural factors will stop working for me and start working against me. And more than that (because 'do this so it will help you when you're 40' is a pretty crappy motivational speech to a 24-yr-old), I miss being able to touch my fully extended toes. I miss the feeling of accomplishment that comes from making a change to one's own body and seeing it take shape. What those changes will or should be, I have not yet determined, but after a year characterized mostly by feeling a distinct lack of control over my own life, it's nice to start to see some concrete evidence that there are still things within my control, and that it benefits me more to invest in the things I can change than to fret about the things I can't. So that's cool.
Wednesday, July 25, 2012
Call a spade a spade
This is one that has sat, nearly finished, in my posts for a while, and it says things I think need to be said, so I'm polishing it off and sending it out the door. How long I've sat on it, you can determine by the age of the links at the bottom.
One of my pet peeves about conservatives in general and the tea party in particular is the inconsistency with which they fuss about the national deficit. President Bush inherited a government budget that was actually recording surpluses and proceeded to drive it straight into the ground, not only by cutting taxes on all and sundry but by starting two wars and making expensive changes to Medicare. Did conservatives utter a peep about deficit spending and passing our debt on to our children and all that jazz? Not so much. They may not have liked it all that much, but so long as their guy was in charge, they sucked it up and pretended not to notice, or that a little fiscal irresponsibility was a worthy price for all the other good stuff he was doing. It was only when President Obama took office, and started spending money on things that they weren't happy about, that the federal deficit became a big issue to conservatives.
The unfortunate thing, if we're operating under Keynsian economics here, is that right now - during and immediately after a crippling recession, when the economy is depressed and taxable revenues are low - is exactly when we should be using deficit spending to keep our heads above water. The flip side, of course, is that during times of prosperity - like, I don't know, the early 2000's - is when you're supposed to pay off your debts, balance your books and establish a position of strength so that you can go into debt during times of need. We, of course, bombed that, so now instead of spending the surpluses of plenty in our time of want, we're piling debt upon debt. And I definitely agree that this is bad. But the proper time to raise a ruckus about this was during the Bush years. And yet, because the people who worry about deficit spending tended to agree with him on most other things, they held their peace.
All of this is very sad and cranky-making, of course, but this isn't a blog post to rant about the failings of conservative punditry. That was just background and context. What I need to say is that I think I, and the rest of the confirmed liberals who make up Obama's base, are guilty of the same double standard when it comes to the handling of civil liberties in the war on terror.
One of my pet peeves about conservatives in general and the tea party in particular is the inconsistency with which they fuss about the national deficit. President Bush inherited a government budget that was actually recording surpluses and proceeded to drive it straight into the ground, not only by cutting taxes on all and sundry but by starting two wars and making expensive changes to Medicare. Did conservatives utter a peep about deficit spending and passing our debt on to our children and all that jazz? Not so much. They may not have liked it all that much, but so long as their guy was in charge, they sucked it up and pretended not to notice, or that a little fiscal irresponsibility was a worthy price for all the other good stuff he was doing. It was only when President Obama took office, and started spending money on things that they weren't happy about, that the federal deficit became a big issue to conservatives.
The unfortunate thing, if we're operating under Keynsian economics here, is that right now - during and immediately after a crippling recession, when the economy is depressed and taxable revenues are low - is exactly when we should be using deficit spending to keep our heads above water. The flip side, of course, is that during times of prosperity - like, I don't know, the early 2000's - is when you're supposed to pay off your debts, balance your books and establish a position of strength so that you can go into debt during times of need. We, of course, bombed that, so now instead of spending the surpluses of plenty in our time of want, we're piling debt upon debt. And I definitely agree that this is bad. But the proper time to raise a ruckus about this was during the Bush years. And yet, because the people who worry about deficit spending tended to agree with him on most other things, they held their peace.
All of this is very sad and cranky-making, of course, but this isn't a blog post to rant about the failings of conservative punditry. That was just background and context. What I need to say is that I think I, and the rest of the confirmed liberals who make up Obama's base, are guilty of the same double standard when it comes to the handling of civil liberties in the war on terror.
Saturday, July 21, 2012
Blogger being a pain
As much as I like my tasteful black background with white text, it makes things a pain when Blogger decides to make the background for half of my text white and doesn't give me an option to set the background to transparent. This has happened on the last two posts I have worked on. C'mon, Google. Stop wallowing in freakishly large piles of money and make the UI make sense.
Saturday, July 14, 2012
Political blogging and the proper scrutiny of police
I think my problem with blogging is the same as my problem
with writing in general: it's not that I don't have great ideas (or at least,
ideas that I think are great), but that I have difficulty making the transition
from 'diversion' to 'habit' that is necessary to produce writing on a
consistent basis. Weeks will go by in which I either don't think of blogging,
or think, 'oh yeah, I should do that sometime' and then do something else. And
yet I want to stick with it. I finally figured out how to delete an old blog,
and removed the class blog I had to produce sophomore year, and might yet
delete this one, but only after backing up my posts, and only if I am confident
that I will be more successful at sticking to my next one. In the meantime, I
have posts from April and May in various states of completion (and that's
another problem; starting ideas and then trailing off and leaving them in
stasis for months), so hopefully I'll get to those shortly; I'm also mulling
over a future post on the gradual dehipsterization of my taste in music.
In the meantime, more and more often when I think about political topics, I find myself framing it in terms of what I would say were I an elected official dealing with such a thing. Which is an interesting train of thought my mind has been following these last few months, I think. I'm not sure it's a realistic ambition, or even an actual ambition; while I might be ok at the actual law-making part of the job, I'm not sure how someone as introverted as I would fare on the campaign trail, especial when just starting out, when meet-n-greet takes precedence over out-of-state attack ads. But it's a fun thought experiment, and who knows? Maybe if teaching jobs continue not to be found, I can start over with a law or poli-sci degree? In any case, I've already written one such post, and I rather expect I'll be writing more, and leaving them up here for future political foes to dig up and use against me. Good times.
So.
As a diligent reader of the internets, I was of course aware of the recent and hilarious legal kerfluffle involving The Oatmeal, in which a scrubby joke-compiler website hired a scrubby lawyer to make scrubby and unsubstantiated threats to extort money from the writer of the Oatmeal. Who promptly and amusingly retaliated with massive and public scorn, backed by the full force of his large and loyal fanbase and the not-inconsiderable legions among the wider internet community who enjoy making fun of scrubs. Things got much, much funnier when the scrubby lawyer in question, one Charles Carreon, got his undies in a wad and decided to take on Oatmeal, IndieGoGo, The National Wildlife Federation, The American Cancer Society, and pretty much everyone who made fun of him. He later backed down, although not without finding a few new ways to wallow in fail on the way out the door; the matter might or might not rest at that.
But this isn't the topic of this post; this is just background.
In the meantime, more and more often when I think about political topics, I find myself framing it in terms of what I would say were I an elected official dealing with such a thing. Which is an interesting train of thought my mind has been following these last few months, I think. I'm not sure it's a realistic ambition, or even an actual ambition; while I might be ok at the actual law-making part of the job, I'm not sure how someone as introverted as I would fare on the campaign trail, especial when just starting out, when meet-n-greet takes precedence over out-of-state attack ads. But it's a fun thought experiment, and who knows? Maybe if teaching jobs continue not to be found, I can start over with a law or poli-sci degree? In any case, I've already written one such post, and I rather expect I'll be writing more, and leaving them up here for future political foes to dig up and use against me. Good times.
So.
As a diligent reader of the internets, I was of course aware of the recent and hilarious legal kerfluffle involving The Oatmeal, in which a scrubby joke-compiler website hired a scrubby lawyer to make scrubby and unsubstantiated threats to extort money from the writer of the Oatmeal. Who promptly and amusingly retaliated with massive and public scorn, backed by the full force of his large and loyal fanbase and the not-inconsiderable legions among the wider internet community who enjoy making fun of scrubs. Things got much, much funnier when the scrubby lawyer in question, one Charles Carreon, got his undies in a wad and decided to take on Oatmeal, IndieGoGo, The National Wildlife Federation, The American Cancer Society, and pretty much everyone who made fun of him. He later backed down, although not without finding a few new ways to wallow in fail on the way out the door; the matter might or might not rest at that.
But this isn't the topic of this post; this is just background.
Tuesday, May 22, 2012
The E-word
I am currently applying for jobs as a teacher. I am I hold Secondary English/Language Arts licensure (at least provisionally) in three states and am applying to every position I can find in at least a substantial portion of each. I started searching in early February, shortly after finishing student teaching and graduating in January.
I have submitted 82 applications to date. I have only missed 8 application deadlines that I know of, half of which were in the last week; between the increased number of positions, and my need to take time away from applications for interviews and (starting next week) working full-time at my summer job, it's now more or less unfeasible to apply to every application that comes along. That also doesn't count job postings that have no deadline; I'm usually so busy trying to keep ahead of deadlines that those without get pushed to the back of the line, and I'm sure many of the open-deadline positions on my list have been filled for weeks. Until the rate of postings starts to slow down (and it may have, although I haven't checked my job boards for close to a week), there's only so much I can do.
I have had 7 interviews. One of those was for a position that I actually had not applied for; my resume came into consideration because the district had it from a job fair. Another district scheduled me for an interview, but then unscheduled me in favor of someone else. Yeah. Classy, I know. Of the 7 interviews I have had, 4 have notified me of having selected another candidate, one has not contacted me but can be safely assumed to be a bust, and one is still a possibility but is several days past their intended timeframe of reply, from which I deduce that they have offered to another candidate and are waiting to see if he/she accepts and is approved by their board; the only way they will offer it to me is if every more favored candidate turns them down. Not holding my breath. The seventh interview was this afternoon; they expect to be contacting candidates with their decision on Wednesday.
I have received confirmed rejections for 31 of the applications I have sent, counting the unsuccessful interviews.
I am so, so very sick of job applications.
I have submitted 82 applications to date. I have only missed 8 application deadlines that I know of, half of which were in the last week; between the increased number of positions, and my need to take time away from applications for interviews and (starting next week) working full-time at my summer job, it's now more or less unfeasible to apply to every application that comes along. That also doesn't count job postings that have no deadline; I'm usually so busy trying to keep ahead of deadlines that those without get pushed to the back of the line, and I'm sure many of the open-deadline positions on my list have been filled for weeks. Until the rate of postings starts to slow down (and it may have, although I haven't checked my job boards for close to a week), there's only so much I can do.
I have had 7 interviews. One of those was for a position that I actually had not applied for; my resume came into consideration because the district had it from a job fair. Another district scheduled me for an interview, but then unscheduled me in favor of someone else. Yeah. Classy, I know. Of the 7 interviews I have had, 4 have notified me of having selected another candidate, one has not contacted me but can be safely assumed to be a bust, and one is still a possibility but is several days past their intended timeframe of reply, from which I deduce that they have offered to another candidate and are waiting to see if he/she accepts and is approved by their board; the only way they will offer it to me is if every more favored candidate turns them down. Not holding my breath. The seventh interview was this afternoon; they expect to be contacting candidates with their decision on Wednesday.
I have received confirmed rejections for 31 of the applications I have sent, counting the unsuccessful interviews.
I am so, so very sick of job applications.
Thursday, March 22, 2012
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.
--
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.
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.
--
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.
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