November 19, 2008
When we can’t lose
On Thursday, the Stratford Tigers football team will defend its historic streak of five consecutive WIAA Division VI state championships at Camp Randall, Madison, against conference rivals, the Edgar Wildcats.
We are thrilled. It’s one thing to follow a local team down to Madison and watch the cream of our high school athletes try and capture some WIAA glory. It’s another to know that—no matter what happens—a team representing one of this newspaper’s family of communities will be state football champions.
In this deal, we can’t lose.
Could anyone outside of Hollywood dream up a more exciting finale to this year’s high school football season? We don’t think so. Not only will Stratford defend its place in the WIAA history books, but it will do so in front of a statewide audience broadcast live on television at UW-Madison. And the Tigers won’t be defending their winning ways to just anybody. They will travel 175 miles to the Wisconsin state capital to play a team in a neighboring school 13 miles away. You have to admit it. This is a great, great sports story.
Just about every high school has a football team, but not every high school has football teams like Edgar and Stratford have, where a proud tradition continues to inspire a large, devoted community following. In Thursday’s game, there will be a winner and a loser. Yet, from our perspective, both Stratford and Edgar can be justifiably proud to showcase their youth on the state stage. In this respect, both communities will be winners after the final whistle is blown.
Human capital
The Marathon County Board of Supervisors and Wausau Region Chamber of Commerce are in a rough patch these days. The chamber board of directors in early November ended funding for an ag development agent and booted out Partners for Progressive Agriculture (PPA) from its offices. The county board, in turn, suspended its financial support for the chamber until the board’s Education and Economic Development Committee determines whether the chamber is delivering anything, including support for agriculture, for the money the county pays out every year.
In debate last Thursday, supervisors, notably Ed Gale, Wausau, said the county should not automatically fund the chamber because agriculture is important. Chamber executive director Roger Luce said in rebuttal, however, that his organization is committed to supporting agriculture, although not the traditional PPA marketing activities, including a June dairy breakfast, et cetera. Luce said the chamber wants to develop “value added” agriculture, including bio-fuels.
We are disappointed that the county board and chamber are not working together and, instead, seem to be arguing over what it means to support agriculture.
As a rural newspaper here in western Marathon County, we have some definite ideas about what it means to “support agriculture.” To us, supporting agriculture does not mean just supporting existing farmers, but, instead, creating a new generation of farmers to keep working lands in production after the current generation retires. Putting business-savvy farmers on the land is the best tool in the fight to preserve “rural character.” Thus the key role of a county-supported chamber in an agricultural county should be to recruit, motivate and train the people needed to take over and modernize existing farms. What should Marathon County expect the Wausau chamber to do for its investment in economic development? In part, develop the human capital needed for a successful future agriculture.
November 12, 2008
Give Al a call
A crisis is a terrible thing to waste.
That’s why we appreciate comments from former Vice President Al Gore who argued this past week that, as the nation confronts economic calamity, it should get going on an energy independence project that will substantially reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
His proposal is big-minded, but doable. Gore proposes funding incentives to construct solar thermal plants in the American Southwest as well as wind farms from Texas to the Dakotas to produce plenty of electricity. This electricity will be transmitted to population centers in eastern and western cities by way of a $400 billion high-voltage, low-loss underground power lines which will be part of a new national “smart” power grid. The electricity will be used to power a new fleet of plug-in hybrid cars. Gore further proposes a national effort to better insulate buildings.
The key thing Gore proposes is to strategically use the renewable resources of the nation to power cars, homes and factories, instead of using foreign oil and climate warming coal to meet the country’s energy demands.
The point is to both slow climate change and also to finally achieve some measure of energy independence, an unmet national goal for the past three decades.
Obviously, a major national program such as Gore is proposing would be expensive. Yet would it be any more expensive than the $1.7 trillion the United States will spend seeking to “liberate” Iraq with the intention of protecting future oil supplies?
Gore’s proposal would require a national consensus and energy plan to replace an energy system reliant on private, multi-national businesses and state power regulation.
Can we get there?
Maybe not. This week, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi got behind giving the Big Three US auto makers a $25 billion loan to try and keep them out of bankruptcy. The loan, as currently offered, would temporarily keep in business the same old wooly-headed management that gave the nation its current fleet of gas-guzzling SUV’s and trucks, intensifying its addiction to imported oil.
Clearly, House Democrats hope to stopper the economic disaster that would follow if the nation lost its car manufacturing sector.
But it’s hardly good enough for the government just to invest taxpayer money in the slow-motion train wreck called the American auto industry. Where’s the future in that?
Pelosi and House Democrats need to use the current crisis to maneuver this country towards a brighter, greener energy future.
They should give Al Gore a call. What is needed is some bold thinking.
November 5, 2008
Did we mean it?
On Tuesday, voters in Wisconsin, as well across the nation, elected Illinois Senator Barack Obama as US President, issuing in what could become a new political era based not on political division, but unity. Republican challenger John McCain, while promising not to go negative, sanctioned his campaign to tar Obama as a domestic terrorist, black militant, socialist and corrupt Chicago politico. Obama held his high ground and the American electorate, finally tired of these Bush-era cut and dice politics, gave him a decisive win.
Yet, as Obama himself noted in his victory speech before an estimated quarter million people in Grant Park, Chicago, his election will not alone bring about a new politics, but, instead, only offer the chance for “change.” He said real political change must come from the people.
We agree. This country will not enjoy a new politics that will really change Washington, D.C., unless we, the people, continue to choose unity, compromise and arm-and-arm patriotism over division, cockeyed ideological absolutism and a political discourse that paints the people we disagree with as somehow less American.
We the people will be tested. Upon being sworn into office, Obama will put in his place to end the War in Iraq and change strategy in the War in Afghanistan. Obama has promised to stop spending so much borrowed money on the Iraq war. Yet we know that the nation’s military contractors have enormous political influence and that the defense budget supports family incomes all across the country. Will we stand with Obama on US defense strategy or succumb to inevitable charges that he is soft on terrorism, against US troops or playing into the hands of Iran or Europe or the United Nations? Obama can preach unity, but will we, the people, stay undivided?
Again, Obama will put forward at some point a national health insurance plan. The country’s health insurance companies will fight this. Their survival is at stake. They will run “Harry and Louise” type commercials across the country and attempt to convince people that US health care, the most expensive but not the most effective, is basically okay. A Democratically controlled White House and Congress could probably pass some type of landmark universal health care legislation but not if we the people, divided and bickering, won’t support it.
Third, the nation has to come to grips with global climate change at the very time when we dearly seek fossil fuels to keep a shattered economy humming. Obama will put forward some long-range plan, but, doubtlessly, it will require some sacrifice and economic retooling. Will we create a new “green economy” or, hearing the protests of Big Oil, the coal industry and the auto industry, stay mired in the status quo for lack of a political consensus? That’s our choice, isn’t it?
Tuesday’s election signaled Washington, D.C., that the people want basic reform in government. President-elect Obama promised Tuesday night to offer that basic change. The question becomes whether we, the American people, have truly rejected the past politics of division. On Tuesday, the people sent a message. But did we really mean it?
October 29, 2008
Vote on Tuesday
The United States is bogged down in two wars, the economy is hurtling towards recession, the planet is threatened with global warming, health care costs are soaring and the era of cheap oil appears to have eclipsed. Two presidential candidates, Barack Obama, the Democrat, and John McCain, the Republican, both promise to rechart this country’s future and change Washington, D.C.
Everyone has a major stake in next Tuesday’s election.
That’s why we encourage all eligible voters to register and vote.
Another sad chapter
Together, we’ll make history.
Lamentably, this newspaper has to once again admonish the Edgar Village Board for its treatment of Sue Willhite.
Last week, village president Richard Guenther announced to this newspaper that the board had agreed to hire Sue Willhite as Edgar village administrator, but on Monday three trustees bolted from a meeting where the board was supposed to tie up loose ends in Willhite’s contract and then take an official public vote naming her as administrator. The board members who exited the meeting were Mike Bergs, Terry Lepak and Tom Sommer.
The result is that Willhite, who reportedly gave notice to quit her current job after receiving a letter of intent from village president Guenther, has been tossed into financial limbo and subject to public humiliation.
There are no excuses here. No one should be treated this way. Never.
From what we can pull together, Bergs, Lepak and Sommer were upset that they did not vote to hire Willhite as administrator. We understand that concern. A village board should absolutely vote to hire an administrator. But why make the potential employee suffer? Why cause a public spectacle?
We expect the Edgar Village Board to act in a professional way and hire a competent, qualified administrator who will work on behalf of the Edgar community. The board failed miserably. The board dragged its lone qualified candidate into a public squabble over procedure.
The board action sullies the reputation of the village as a whole. You can’t claim to have a “small, friendly village” on your village Web site when this is the way your local board treats people.
Hang your head low Edgar. This is not a proud moment.
New numbers
Last week, we warned Marathon voters that proponents of a new fire station in Marathon were “dangerously optimistic” in their belief that the village had the capacity to pay for a new station.
This warning, based on inaccurate information, was in error and we regret the confusion. Village administrator Dave Joswiak now reports the current village tax haul is so healthy it can pay for a new station, a new parcel on which to place the station, and its share of a new village library with cash to spare.
Joswiak’s report does not, in itself, decide the question whether the village should build a fire station at 408 Market Street, the major issue involved in a Nov. 4 direct legislation referendum. It does undercut, however, the argument heard from some quarters that the village can only afford to build at 408 Market Street and, if that parcel is not used, the village will never be able to erect a fire station anywhere else. The village has options.
October 22, 2008
The way it works
Village of Marathon City trustees Jim Lemanski and Andy Kurtz held a meeting Tuesday to urge residents to vote against a Nov. 4 direct legislation referendum that would force the village to hold a binding public referendum on any capital project over $500,000. The pair argued that the referendum, if approved, would unduly shackle the board but, more pointedly, defended a board majority’s decision to locate a new fire station at 408 Market Street. Proponents of the referendum, including village president John Small, say a yes vote is needed to block construction of the fire station at that address and leave the parcel for future senior housing.
Both sides have well-developed arguments. If you listen to Lemanski and Kurtz, the 408 Market Street site is the village’s only viable, affordable fire station location. Small disagrees. The village president thinks that the village would best be served by moving VanDerLoop Equipment out to the business park, using part of its downtown lot for a fire station and reserving 408 Market Street for senior housing.
We will leave it up to Marathon voters which side presents the stronger argument, but caution the village that, in our view, both sides seem dangerously optimistic in their opinion that the village will be able to afford any of these options.
Trustee Lemanski told the Tuesday meeting goers that surplus revenues from the business park could be designated to pay better than half the cost of a an estimated $920,000 fire station and that future tax base growth would pay for the rest.
When pressed, Lemanski admitted that if the new growth failed to turn up, the board would be forced to raise property taxes to finance the balance on the new fire station. Said Lemanski: “Hopefully, growth will take care of the costs. If not, it will raise the taxes. That’s the way it works.”
But that’s not the way it works.
First, the nation, according to just about every economist, is heading into a almost certain recession as a result of an international credit crunch. Nobody knows how an economic downturn will affect Marathon City, but you’d have to be nearly delirious with business park fever to expect that commercial growth is going to help you pay for a fire station.
Second, let’s assume that an economic miracle does occur and some large business decides to plop a major facility in the Marathon Business Park. Does that mean the village will get the money for its fire station? No. We understand that the village can pocket $580,000 in business park surplus revenues and use that for any purpose, including a fire station. That is because the village loaned the business park that sum. Yet, critically, any future surpluses beyond the $580,000 must be used to retire the business park loan. You cannot use that money for a fire station.
Third, the village is under the state’s two percent property levy cap. This means that the village board cannot raise property taxes to pay the balance owed on a new fire station in a no-growth scenario. The only way the village will be able to make the payments on the fire station will be to cut services, probably road work. We can see clear to a scenario where the village could build a fire station without raising property taxes, but not without subjecting Marathon residents to years of neglected potholes or some other reduction in services.
This newspaper is not wise enough to tell Marathon residents where best to put a fire station but, with our limited understanding about “how things work,” we caution village residents about building fire stations without a way to pay for them.
October 15, 2008
What we didn’t hear
Republican presidential hopeful Sen. John McCain brought the race to the White House to the front steps of Central Wisconsin on Thursday but, if we check out the polls, did not do himself any good. Wisconsin used to be a battleground state, but, with 21 days left in the campaign, it is now considered solid Obama territory with the Democrat enjoying a 10.4 percent lead. McCain made an impressive entrance to Mosinee aboard the “Straight Talk Express” private jet, received a hearty welcome with a high school band and local politicians, just like he did elsewhere at other state stops, but failed to move public opinion.
Why? We think it was in what we didn’t hear.
In his remarks, McCain went negative against Obama, trying to paint the Illinois senator as part of a corrupt “old boys network” in Washington, D.C., that could be blamed for the global financial meltdown. McCain blasted Obama for a $3 million planetarium project earmark request (it was never funded) and that the senator received over $126,000 in campaign contributions from financially troubled Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (McCain himself pocketed $21,000).
Yet, political fingerpointing is hardly what voters wanted to hear about in the depths of a once-in-a-century financial debacle.
What we didn’t hear from McCain was his analysis of how a global “free market” economic system could tank so abruptly, how the senator, a conservative, could approve of dramatic government intrusions into the market, indeed, nationalizing banks, and how his administration would never let this happen again.
The financial meltdown is the result of trillions of dollars of developing country investments seeking a safe harbor and finding the American housing market. Bankers sold mortgages, both good and bad, and insured these investments against reversals with trillions of dollars of derivatives, including credit default swaps. When the American housing bubble burst, a global house of cards fell apart. Various people during the 1990’s fought to regulate derivatives but Federal Reserve Chairman Alan (“the Oracle”) Greenspan fought furiously to protect the free market. The Republicans supported Greenspan. “You will go down as the greatest chairman in the history of the Federal Reserve,” said Texas Republican Sen. Phil Gram, chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, in 1999.
Gramm is now chief economics advisor to the McCain campaign.
McCain and Obama will have their final debate tonight. What we need to hear from McCain is how his administration would tackle big problems, such as the health care crisis, Medicare funding, Social Security funding, and the national debt, rather than “shift” the problem to a future generation. We all have seen what happened when housing market risk was “shifted” to somebody else. The whole world got burned.
McCain’s burden is to lay out what he would do in these ultra-challenging times. Silence will prove fatal.
October 8, 2008
When deficits matter
Could there be anything more shocking than to watch world financial markets tumble domino-like following the implosion of American investment banks, including Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, as a result of the bubble bursting in the nation’s overvalued housing market?
Yes, indeed. It is to realize how blindly the Bush administration ran the nation into this crisis.
Let’s go back to Nov. 25, 2007. At that time, Fortune magazine questioned Vice President Dick Cheney about an increase in home foreclosures, bank losses in the billions and the spectre of a recession. Cheney, returning to the central themes of the Bush years, said the federal government should not intervene in the housing crisis and, deficits be damned, continue to cut taxes for the wealthiest of Americans.
Said Cheney: “The fact is, the markets work, and they are working. And people—some of the big companies obviously—have taken risks. Risks mean risk. And there’s an upside as well as a downside in some of the choices they’ve made. We have to be careful not to have this set of developments lead us to significantly expand the role of government in ways that may do damage long-term for the economy.”
Should the government, as advocated by some Democrats, curb predatory lending practices in the housing markets? No, said Cheney: “We don’t want to interfere with the basic, fundamental workings of the markets.”
As things have turned out, the US Government has intervened massively into the market. President Bush signed last week a $700 billion financial sector bailout and, with markets worldwide still in a tizzy, the US Fed has agreed to both buy up bad commercial paper and, in concert with other banks in Europe, cut interest rates.
The government is doing this because it has no other choice. Credit is frozen. Even the State of California may need to turn to the US Treasury to get an operational loan.
Cheney thought “free markets” would work. The credit crisis effectively blew the markets to smithereens.
But Cheney’s mistake was far more basic. He didn’t just misjudge the size of the housing tsunami. His very approach to the economy was wrong.
Despite his claim to “conservatism,” Cheney pushed $1 trillion wars in Iraq and Afghanistan while, simultaneously, significantly cutting income taxes. The result? The nation’s debt now tops $10 trillion, representing 69 percent of the gross domestic product, the highest percentage since 1955.
What Cheney never understood is that these deficits would put America at risk.
Seventy percent of this country’s federal deficit is financed through foreign investment. The US government thus had no choice but to bail-out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, as well as other institutions who invested in sub-prime housing loans. Both the Chinese and Japanese were massively invested in all these institutions. The hard reality is that the US Government could not burn these countries in the housing debacle and then ask for additional investment to float more deficits. The United States is not just addicted to foreign oil. It is addicted to foreign money.
This reality is written into the very language of the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act. We quote Section 112: “To the extent that such foreign financial authorities or banks hold troubled assets as a result of extending financing to financial institutions that have failed or defaulted on such financing…such troubled assets qualify for purchase…” Translated, this means the US government will bail out both foreign and domestic banks, as appropriate.
Former US Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neil (before he got fired) told Vice President Dick Cheney in 2002 that he was worried that the Bush administration’s deficits would cause economic disaster. Cheney’s response: “Deficits don’t matter.”
The global financial system is on fire. The economic forecast is bleak. The American “free market” system has been turned on its head.
Do deficits matter?
Yes, Mr. Cheney, they do.
October 1, 2008
Let’s save the fish
Together, we need to save the fish at the Big Eau Pleine Reservoir.
On Monday, Bill Duncanson, department head for the Marathon County Department of Parks, Recreation and Forestry, announced the county will no longer operate a 27-year-old aerator at the Big Eau Pleine Reservoir, largely as a result of state-imposed levy limits squeezing his budget.
Without an aerator, the fish at the Big Eau Pleine Reservoir are at major risk. Over the past few years, this newspaper has chronicled crisis situations at the Big Eau Pleine Reservoir where smart use of the aerator prevented fish kills. Think back to January of 2005 when an untimely rain washed snow pack, along with winter-spread manure, down ditches all along the 360 square miles of the Big Eau Pleine Reservoir watershed. A wall of water with zero dissolved oxygen marched towards the Big Eau Pleine’s estimated 40,000 adult walleyes as well as other game species and rough fish. Throwing the switch on the aerator prevented a mass slaughter of fish. Again, only last year, the aerator proved vital. This year, an extra heavy snowpack eliminated photosynthesis below the ice, causing a significant oxygen sag and putting the fish at incredible risk. The aerator saved the day.
With the county “backing away” from the aerator, nobody is stepping forward to protect the Big Eau Pleine fishery. The Wisconsin Valley Improvement Corporation, which has a federal license to generate hydropower from the reservoir, says it is committed to continue paying for the aerator’s electricity but won’t, as the county has done, maintain the system’s compressors and set up a reflective tape barrier to keep snowmobilers off the aerated Eau Pleine ice pack.
Likewise, the Department of Natural Resources says it has regulatory jurisdiction over the Eau Pleine’s water and fish, but it lacks budget dollars to operate an aerator.
This is not good enough.
No one can predict whether or not the fish in the Eau Pleine will be at risk or not this coming winter or spring—that hinges on the weather—but it is crazy to ruin one of the major walleye fisheries in Wisconsin for lack of $6,500. That’s less than the cost of one pretty nice fishing boat.
In our view, somebody needs to do something to save the Big Eau Pleine fish, both over the coming winter and, then, for the long-term.
Here’s one plan, we think, that could work. County supervisors who represent towns bordering the Big Eau Pleine Reservoir (Alan Kraus, Frank Zebro and Bob Wiesman) should amend the 2009 county budget to pay to operate the current aerator one more year and, in search for a long-term solution, call upon the Marathon County Conservation, Planning and Zoning Department to figure out a long-term fix to insure the survival of Big Eau Pleine fish. This study would weigh the benefits of imposing Total Maximum Daily Limit (TMDL) manure regulations on county dairy farmers versus replacing the old, inefficient aerator system with new technology. This long-term plan would need to be a collaborative effort between the county, DNR, WVIC, sportsman groups, environmental groups and the local dairy industry.
Doing nothing will be easy. The result, depending on weather, could be thousands and thousands of dead fish floating in Big Eau Pleine green scum and lots of frustrated, angry people pointing fingers at one another, all denying their responsibility.
The better way is to work together, protect the environment and save the fish.
September 24, 2008
No blank checks
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke has compared the credit crisis to a clogged artery. Unless cleared, the patient will arrest and recovery from such a collapse might take years.
This is the dreary prognosis that Americans are considering as Congress debates whether to pay $700 billion to unclog the nation’s credit arteries — $2,300 for every American citizen.
Taxpayers are rightly furious that so much money might be spent because of the greed of so few. But it is the right thing to do if the alternative is as bad as Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson have portrayed it.
On Sept. 17, the circulatory system that provides credit very nearly collapsed as investors fled money market funds and short-term loans to banks froze up, The Wall Street Journal has reported. Without intervention, officials believed, companies might soon be unable to fund day-to-day operations. They feared the economy was grinding to a halt.
The Paulson and Bernanke solution is to have the government buy up investments that no longer can be traded — most of them mortgage-backed securities — and hold them until they can be sold. The total price tag might be lower if the government can sell these securities at a profit.
Congress must demand strict accountability and transparency from this audacious plan. Here’s what’s needed:
• A bipartisan advisory board set up jointly by the administration and Congress to monitor the process.
• An option to take shares of stock in companies that participate as another means to protect taxpayers.
• Protection for average homeowners: Allow bankruptcy judges to modify mortgages. The lending industry has blocked this provision in the past, but it’s time to open this artery, too.
• Limits on executive compensation. Executives of institutions that sell bad debt to the government shouldn’t profit directly from the sale, and their compensation should be limited if the government has to inject a large amount of money into their firms.
Finally, we have some advice for our friends in Congress, who are so eager to adjourn at the end of this week for the fall campaign:
The nation is on the verge of spending hundreds of billions of dollars on securities that are viewed as so distressed they no longer can be sold through normal markets. This is a momentous decision that could remake American capitalism for decades. If Congress must remain in session past this weekend in order to craft a thoughtful bill, so be it. Members will have even more to brag about back home.
Unclog the arteries quickly — but make sure that the cure isn’t worse than the disease.
September 17, 2008
Getting to know Sarah
Republican presidential candidate John McCain and vice presidential pick Sarah Palin will hold a rally Thursday in Green Bay and we can expect bunting, bands and standard political fanfare, but little new substance.
That’s a shame. The McCain campaign has gathered steam here in Wisconsin, largely as the result of adding Ms. Palin, but the attractive and spunky governor of Alaska, carefully shielded from the media, has not had to answer basic questions about her governing style both as mayor of Wasilla and Alaska’s chief executive.
We don’t begrudge the McCain-Palin ticket a boisterous rally for supporters, but, here in what is now a battleground state, we think it is only right that the local press be able to ask the candidates some questions. Especially Palin.
The Anchorage Daily News states that Palin at this stage of the campaign has no unscripted moments in public and is typically whisked away from rallies so she does not have to answer difficult questions about steamy political turmoil back home at the Alaska statehouse.
You can’t claim to want to be the first woman vice-president in America when your own campaign guards you like a princess.
The questions dogging Palin are legion. How is that she repeatedly has said she as governor halted in 2007 the infamous federally earmark-funded $398 million Bridge to Nowhere (replacing the ferry that connects Ketchikan with its airport on Gravina Island, pop. 50) but, back in 2006, she wholeheartedly supported Sen. Ted Stevens (now under indictment) and then House Transportation Committee chairman Don Young (“Mr. Pork”) getting funding for the project. She told the Anchorage Daily News: “Yes, I would like to get Alaska’s infrastructure projects built sooner rather than later. The window is now—while our congressional delegation is in a strong position.” And how is that Palin now counts herself as a “maverick reformer” when her running mate, John McCain himself, criticized three federal earmarks that Palin, as mayor, sought for Wasilla, Alaska. These include a $500,000 public transportation system in 2001, a $1 million emergency communications center and a $450,000 agricultural processing facility in 2002. While McCain was decrying earmarks back in 2001-03, Mayor Palin, having hired a lobbyist, Steven Silver, a former chief of staff for Sen. Stevens, was raking in the federal dough: 14 earmarks totalling $26,900,000. Palin continued to seek earmarks as governor. This year’s list of projects totals $197.8 million.
That’s not all. How is it that Palin said “no thanks” to the Bridge to Nowhere, but continues to support federal earmarks for a $600 million Knik Arm bridge that would benefit her hometown, Wasilla? Back in 2005, McCain himself called the project, requested by Rep. Young, a “monstrosity” and “terrifying in its fiscal consequences.”
Palin, appointed chairman of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, deserves credit for quitting the panel and going public when Gov. Murkowski refused to punish unethical political cronyism that thwarted oil company regulation. Yet how is it that Palin has appointed old high school classmates and fellow churchgoers to top state jobs? Is that not cronyism? What about the refusal of 10 members of the Palin administration to honor subponaes in the messy case where Palin fired the state’s Public Safety Commissioner Walter Monegan for failing to fire a state trooper, Mike Wooten, who recently divorced the governor’s sister. Is that not cronyism, too?
Palin deserves every chance to answer all of the allegations. Yet her continued silence bodes ill. She may turn out to be pretty, talented and a liar. Wisconsin has a right to get to know the real Sarah Palin.
September 10, 2008
Our jail
For years, this newspaper has reported the difficulty Marathon County has had with its growing jail population and the renewed need to build another jail.
On Monday, Marathon County administrator Brad Karger announced some startling news. It was that the jail issue is not the county’s problem. The problem belongs to us, the people.
With refreshing candor, Karger told the Finance and Property Committee that there was no way he could “finesse” building a new jail and, at the same time, retain core “quality of life” programs enjoyed by citizens. “The numbers are just too big,” he said. Under the state’s levy limit, Karger explained, the county has the capacity to increase taxes to build a new $40 million jail, but it lacks capacity to pay the $4 million a year needed to operate the jail. That means you can staff a bigger jail, said Karger only by mothballing all county parks and a handful of smaller departments or, if state and federal law don’t allow those departments to lapse, then shutting down all county libraries.
Karger said it is imperative for citizens to better understand the jail issue and then provide input about what the county should do. Given that building some kind of bigger jail is unavoidable, does the county then gut its most popular, discretionary programs to pay for staffing? What about passing a referendum to get around the levy limits? Finance director Kristi Kordus reports that one penny on the county levy these days will generate $92,000. According to our calculator, it would cost the owner of a $150,000 house a tax increase of $112 to pay for both building and staffing a new jail.
Any jail discussion has to deal with the question of rehabilitation. There is no question that jail is a stupid government program. According to the statistics, if you send 10 people to jail, nine will be back for more. The question becomes whether you should offer rehabilitative services, mostly drug and alcohol abuse treatment, to make jail more effective, less of a taxpayer burden. The problem is that rehabilitation is expensive. Intensive rehab for drug and alcohol abuse costs something like $500 a day. That compares with $50 a day for jail. It is a gamble whether rehab programs work and, if they do, whether they save taxpayers any money in either the short or long term. A jail construction referendum would increase the county’s property tax rate by 75 cents. Should a referendum raise the tax rate even higher to pay for inmate rehabilitation?
These are all difficult issues to deal with. One point of view is that handling these problems is what we elect county supervisors to do. That viewpoint forgets that the state legislature now prevents county boards from raising taxes as needed. That means, as Karger has announced, the problems of the county now fall into the lap of the public.
The reality is that we can no longer wonder what the county board will do with its jail. We will have to deal with the difficult challenge of what to do with our jail.
September 3, 2008
A great step forward
It’s pretty easy to get cynical about politics.
Yet, this year we can take some inspiration.
Last week, the Democratic Party nominated its first black man as candidate for President of the United States. This week, the Republicans will nominate a woman to be their candidate for Vice President.
These nominations speak volumes. They are historic. They say that the nation, which has struggled with race and gender, has truly evolved. In a country made up of a diversity of races and both genders, we no longer will have a presidential contest between four old white men representing the major political parties.
This is progress. We are no longer supporting presidential candidates that simply look like us or talk like us, but we are, instead, supporting the man or woman who we think has the right stuff to be President.
It has not been an easy road. We recall earlier in the presidential campaign when the public, then unfamiliar with Barack Obama, couldn’t find fault with his mixed race, but could generate plenty of rumors about him being a Muslim (as if that, in itself, was bad) and a security threat to the United States. The implicit argument, of course, was that somebody with brown skin could not be trusted to be President of the United States. The nation, to its credit, didn’t buy the argument. Obama, at the same time, had to clarify that he did not deserve the Presidency simply because he was black. Race was not the point, he had to repeat over and over again. Obama had to leave his church and disown his own pastor to clarify this position.
This nation started the 2008 election odyssey with questions whether a woman could be the nation’s chief executive. Hillary Clinton convinced the nation otherwise. Whether you liked or hated her, there was no doubt that Hillary Clinton could perform as President. Clinton did not get the nomination, but her candidacy cleared the way for women to run for the White House.
Enter Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin. The Republican Party, eager to make history, too, will nominate her this week for Vice President. Clearly, she benefits from Mrs. Clinton’s campaign. As a political unknown, Mrs. Palin is being assaulted with hardball questions, both fair and foul. Some people don’t think she should get such a shakedown, but that’s part of the process. If she is of presidential caliber, we are certain she will answer her critics and satisfy the public. Mrs. Palin, who scores pro-life political points for personally giving birth to a Down Syndrome baby, does play the gender card to her advantage. Yet we are certain the nation will ultimately judge her not on gender, but whether she has the right stuff to be President.
President George W. Bush must be given some credit for these developments. It was Bush who picked Colin Powell as the nation’s first black Secretary of State and, in succession, Condoleezza Rice as the nation’s first woman black Secretary of State. There is no way either Obama, Mrs. Clinton or Palin would be where they are today without Bush putting these people in charge of the nation’s foreign policy.
Fifty years ago, it would have been nearly impossible to think this nation would so embrace principles of diversity.
Actually, the Rev. Martin Luther King did, but only in the form of a dream.
Said the minister on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on Aug. 28, 1963: “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”
We are not a perfect nation. There is racism and gender discrimination. But, sometime over the summer, we made Dr. King’s dream more of a reality. And that’s a great step forward.
August 27, 2008
An opening?
Back in 1986, the Marathon County Board of Supervisors wrestled with what to do about a substandard Bellis Street Jail. With Charlie Balzcun as administrator, the board leadership decided to attach the jail to the courthouse in Wausau. The decision sparked a controversy, especially among rural supervisors who thought a new jail, if not the entire courthouse, should have been placed on a more spacious campus somewhere out on county land served by 72nd Ave. The downtown jail proponents won the fight but would lose their majority in upcoming county board elections. Crucial in that fight was the influence of Wausau-based attorneys who opposed moving the courthouse and jail miles from their law offices.
It is over 20 years later and the county, once again, is faced with what to do with too many offenders and not enough jail beds.
Yet this time things are markedly different.
Wausau supervisor Ed Gale, chairman of the county board’s Public Safety Committee, told supervisors last Thursday some fairly amazing things.
First, he said the jail decision would be made by the entire county board, not a clique of powerhouse board insiders as in the past. Second, he said the county was not going to build its way out of a jail overcrowding problem this time. He said meaningful rehabilitation programs, especially for drug and alcohol abuse, were needed just as much as more jail cells. Third, he suggested that a jail addition might not have to be built in downtown Wausau.
We are struck by how times have changed.
Committee chairman Gale is smart enough to try and find consensus on the jail issue, instead of trying to pick a divisive political fight. Second, he is sensitive to board frustration over how county prisoners, especially those with alcohol and drug issues, serve out their terms only to reoffend and land back in jail. Third, Gale seems to have an updated view of what is needed in downtown Wausau. Back in 1986, the City of Wausau, faced with a decaying downtown, thought it needed county investment to help its downtown revitalization effort. These days, the city, we guess, would much prefer to see tax paying retail and business structures right next to the Wausau Center Mall, not a jail annex off the tax roll.
In summary, we heard Gale say something no Wausau supervisor would have dared utter in public back in 1986. Namely, get a county board consensus to move jail beds out of downtown Wausau.
There are rural supervisors still sore that the county jail wound up in downtown Wausau.
Well, supervisor Gale seems to be offering the county an opportunity. Perhaps the county board should seize it.
August 20, 2008
Not a good idea
The Marathon Village Board has been fussing around with building a new fire station for over a decade.
Now the Marathon community gets to join the fracas.
At the very time that a board majority has lined up to support building a new fire station at 408 Market Street, village resident Jack Krautkramer has presented a petition calling on the village board to pass an ordinance restricting the board from going forward with any building project in excess of $500,000 without a binding vote of the people.
Assuming that the village board will reject this limit on its powers, the Marathon electorate will vote Tuesday, Nov. 4, in a direct legislative referendum over whether the proposed ordinance should stick.
If the referendum passes, it would mean that the voters would decide in a spring referendum whether to build what is estimated to be a $920,000 fire station at the Market Street site.
If the people vote down the fire station, the direct legislation would prevent the village board from pursuing that particular fire station proposal for the next two years.
While we encourage the public to get involved in local politics, we think robbing the village board of its power to pursue capital projects could cause more problems than it would solve.
In the name of good government, we urge voters not to support the Krautkramer ordinance. It is a bad idea.
We agree that the ordinance could successfully block building a Market Street fire station, yet we worry about what else the ordinance would stop.
For example, economic development. The village has been in discussion with developer Herman Hilmershausen to run sewer and water north of STH 29 in order to woo businesses to what would become an annex to the village’s business park. We don’t know how much it would cost to develop this business park expansion, but, conceivably, it could cost more than $500,000. No business in the world will propose investing millions of dollars on new facilities north of the highway only after its project is not just debated in public, but subject to a public referendum. That’s not the way business works.
We shudder, too, to think how the village board would respond in an emergency if it would have to get major capital projects approved in referendums. Think of a tornado ripping through the village. Would the village board have to wait until the next scheduled election to get money needed to respond? That’s unacceptable.
We think it makes more sense for a village board to make major capital decisions in consultation with the electorate.
In fairness, however, it has to be said that the village board asked for this challenge from Krautkramer.
Village president John Small convened a citizens committee, including town residents, to thoroughly study the fire station location issue. The village’s Property Committee upended the committee’s recommendation and, by a 5-2 vote, the full board concurred.
The board majority may have thought it was leading on the issue. It was actually inviting political disaster.
Over the years, this newspaper has preached that the Marathon community has needed to find community consensus over the fire station question. At one point, we suggested a fire district between the village and townships. That idea was discarded. We suggested building a fire station in context of a downtown master plan. That idea was ignored. We suggested putting together a master plan to pay for both the fire station, library and other major village projects. That plan is still a work in progress.
We don’t like the Krautkramer petition. It is too heavy-handed. It is too cumbersome. We question its constitutionality. But we would concede that at least one good thing will come out of the direct legislation process: the Marathon community will be forced to reach a consensus that over the past decade it has refused to reach voluntarily. Marathon may never build a new fire station, but, at the very least, the majority will rule.
August 13, 2008
Carbon contracts benefit farmers
During my years on a farm in southeastern Wisconsin, my parents taught their five children to live a life of careful conservation and land and water stewardship long before anyone we knew was talking about “going green.” This was simply representative of their Christian values, of a rural land ethic my father learned growing up on a farm himself, and it made for smart, long-term business decision-making.
Today, those lessons inform my work as Lieutenant Governor, and my Green Economy Agenda is designed to introduce people in their homes, businesses and public institutions like schools to strategies to save and even make money while conserving energy. I traveled with leaders from the Farmer’s Union to introduce their Carbon Credit Program, bringing ongoing innovation to our all-important agricultural producers.
The torrential rains and flooding last month made us see that global climate change affects us all already, but none more directly and immediately as the farmer. A recent federal scientific report deems it “very likely” that such weather extremes, a direct result of global climate change, will continue until we begin to reverse the trend and decrease carbon emissions significantly.
Farmers stand on the front line to drive that change with an innovative program that makes it possible for them to recast that challenge as an opportunity to make their farms more profitable. The program is straightforward: farmers agree to implement approved environmentally-friendly practices -- i.e. designating new acres as no-till, planting new trees or long-term grasses, or capturing methane in digesters. Then independent verifiers determine the number of tons of greenhouse gas emissions saved through each farmer’s efforts, and those tons are converted to “carbon contracts.”
Commodity prices have never been higher, but profits to farmers are low today with the high price of fertilizer and diesel fuel and a weak dollar abroad. Farmers’ participation in the Carbon Credit Program pays them to engage in sustainable practices on their land, helps capture carbon in the land and creates offsets for our manufacturing sector as it makes its own adaptations.
Businesses that join the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX) agree to a cap on their greenhouse gas emissions, and agree to reduce emissions every year. Should they exceed their caps, they must buy carbon contracts to offset excessive emissions. The Farmers Union program provides many of the contracts they purchase.
To put it more simply, farmers emit less, businesses buy the right to emit a little more, and the emissions even out today and go down overall every year.
Currently, the program – also called a cap-and-trade program, because businesses agree to a cap and trade the right to exceed that cap – is voluntary but contractually binding.
The Farmers Union program was developed and continues to be administered by North Dakota Farmers Union. Farmers Union was approved as an aggregator in 2006 by the Chicago Climate Exchange to pool and market blocks of carbon credits through the exchange. The CCX is the world’s first greenhouse gas emission registry, reduction and trade system. It is a voluntary program but once contracts are signed, they are legally binding on all parties.
To date, Farmers Union has sold more than $7.5 million in carbon credits nationwide through CCX and over 3.5 million acres have been enrolled in the Farmers Union Carbon Credit Program.
Across Wisconsin and the nation, farmers resist the false economies inherent in overworking the land. Providing this incentive for careful conservation benefits everyone by keeping farmers on their land. They, in turn, will help jumpstart essential change in other businesses by providing them carbon offsets to help with their transition to the carbon-constrained economy.
The Farmers Union, under the smart leadership of Sue Bieltlich, offers Wisconsin farmers a way to seize their share of the growing green economy in a way that will leave a proud leagacy and healthy land to their heirs. Learn more by calling the WFU State Office at 800-272-5531 or visit http://www.wisconsinfarmersunion.com.
August 6, 2008
We remember
Governor Doyle was up in rural Medford on Tuesday at the Ryan and Cheri Klussendorf farm to announce that $983,000 was available to support a Wisconsin Grazing Lands Conservation Initiative. The governor, noting that half of new Wisconsin dairy farmers are graziers, said that support of grazing was part of an overall strategy to keep this state’s dairy industry competitive with California’s.
We appreciate the support Gov. Doyle provides for the Wisconsin dairy industry, an enterprise so important to this part of the state.
We also think thanks are in order for Senator Russ Decker (D-Weston) who fought so diligently during the budget process to keep grazing funding going.
When federal support for grazing ran dry, it was Senator Decker who proposed a $400,000 state grant program as a budget amendment during Joint Finance Committee deliberations. That proposal failed when all eight Republicans on Joint Finance voted against it. Undaunted, Decker resubmitted his plan on the floor of the Senate, where it passed with Democratic majority support, and then survived the rest of the budget process.
Against the current
Sometimes an editorial has to swim straight upstream.
This is one of those times.
On Tuesday, Wood Communications Group released state survey results that people in Wisconsin, by a two to one margin, favor repeal of the state’s minimum mark-up law on gasoline.
While we understand public frustration with $4 a gallon gasoline at the pump, we reject the notion that deregulating retail gasoline sales will, over the long run, provide relief for consumers.
Some conservative study groups claim that the Unfair Sales Act, which, as amended, requires a minimum 9 percent mark-up over wholesale, adds as much as 30 cents to the price of a gallon of gasoline.
We don’t know whether that is a believable figure or not; but we won’t quibble with it.
The real point is what would happen to the price of gasoline if larger retailers can sell under the wholesale price, drive the competition out of business and then charge whatever they would like.
Thirty cents per gallon may be cheap insurance against retail price gouging.
Let’s understand that the price of gasoline did not suddenly double because of higher global demand, although that is a factor. The price is the result of market inefficiency, that is, a lack of competition.
Why would consumers want to further concentrate the gasoline business? For some short term price relief? That doesn’t make sense.
Insult to injury
White House budget director Jim Nussle had more depressing news about the federal budget this past week. He said President Bush would leave a $482 billion deficit to the next administration. This figure, however, does not include the full cost of military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Nor does it include the cost of a possible second round of economic stimulus, the cost of the housing bill and the impact of stalled income and corporate taxes.
All of this is bad enough.
What is worse, however, is that as the American government slowly sinks in red ink, the government of Iraq is sitting on a huge pile of cash.
The Government Accountability Office reported Tuesday that, given improved oil prices, Iraq should have $79 billion in surplus revenues, mostly invested in American banks and drawing interest.
This is outrageous. Here the American taxpayer is borrowing money to rebuild Iraq and the Malaki government, in the first place, has huge cash reserves, and, second, it would rather bank than spend the money on projects to help the people. In 2007, Iraq spent only 28 percent of a $12 billion reconstruction budget.
People who still support the war in Iraq say we have to stay there to uphold our international reputation. What reputation? As the biggest suckers that ever walked the planet?
July 30, 2008
Making it happen
The hard work is done. Now, the harder work begins. Last week, the Governor’s Task Force on Global Warming completed 16 months of labor by voting on a series of measures aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 22 percent by 2022 and 75 percent by 2050. Now, it’s up to Gov. Jim Doyle and the Legislature to turn those recommendations into policy. They need to start that work soon.
Perhaps not every recommendation needs to be enacted or enacted exactly as the task force recommended. But the overall thrust of the recommendations is in the right direction and a necessary response if Wisconsin is to do its part to meet the challenge posed by climate change. And the state should do all it can to achieve those goals earlier.
The best response, of course, would be a sustained and aggressive international and national effort, but Wisconsin can become a leader on climate change, thanks to the work of Doyle’s task force under the leadership of co-chairs Roy Thilly and Tia Nelson.
The task force recommended 63 policies to achieve the recommended emissions. Broadly, it calls for reduced dependence on coal and foreign oil, a serious increase in energy efficiency and expanded power from wind turbines and other renewable sources.
Among its recommendations: expanding the current Focus on Energy conservation program and encouraging other energy-efficiency tools; building wind turbines on the Great Lakes; expanding mass transit, including commuter rail from Kenosha to Milwaukee; establishing more stringent emission standards for vehicles; increasing the availability and use of renewable biomass and biofuels; relaxing limits on the construction of nuclear power plants once certain conditions are met; and participating in a regional or national plan to cap emissions and reduce them over time by allowing parties to trade in emission credits.
Some of those goals will be easier to achieve than others. All of them deserve a healthy debate, especially the recommendations on nuclear power and a cap-and-trade system.
Only this much is sure: The state needs to seriously address climate change issues, and the task force has given the state a good starting point for doing so.