Tonight I’ll attempt to continue my streak of being present at every home game the Brewers have won as they face the Mets tonight at Miller Park. Speaking of baseball, today is also the birthday of Mark Grudzielanek, born in Milwaukee in 1970, 1996 All Star and member of the 2,000 hit club.
- The actions by the Governor to veto any dedicated transit funding for Milwaukee County yesterday were disappointing. Combined with the dedicated sales tax for parks and EMS, doubly so. The will of the voters in Milwaukee County has been totally ignored by the Governor and the State Legislature. So since nothing changes, nothing will change in Milwaukee County because there was zero political will by certain elected officials to make anything happen. Personally, it’s also a disappointment as I’ve been working on the dedicated sales tax for transit/parks/EMS for nearly a year now with very little in a tangible sense to show for it. But the fight will go on because it has to go on.
- One of the most ridiculously long legal battles over an election may finally be over after the Minnesota Supreme Court rules 5-0 in favor of Al Franken. Democrats now have the 60 votes needed to beat back any Republican obstruction tactics in the Senate.
- Dear teabaggers: We’ve already got a holiday that celebrates American independence, liberty and freedom. The 4th of July. Please stop trying to co-opt national holidays now to advance your anti-government rhetoric? And for the oddballs up in Antigo, get a spell checker. And a perspective grounded in reality while you’re at it. STOP THE BALLOUTS!
I live in the Washington Heights neighborhood of Milwaukee, WI with my wife Jen, our daughter Emerson, and sons Carter and Colton.
I really have to ask… Why are you lamenting the omission of a minor tax in Milwaukee when Democrats won such huge victories in massive tax increases on everybody? Property taxes will soar over the next two years (No QEO and a drop in shared revenue… though no drop in state spending), new capital gains tax, new phone taxes, double digit school tax increases in Milwaukee, and I could go on all day.
When will it be enough taxes for you? Many Wisconsin families and businesses are already at the breaking point… when is it enough? I admit, I have never understood the liberal desire to take away peoples income, nor the liberal desire to control peoples life decisions. Please enlighten me.
The capital gains tax or income tax increase on the highest earners won’t affect “everybody”. Any increases through the property tax are independent of the budget. The .75/month on my cell phone will affect me though.
I guess we’re just different in how we see things. I didn’t look at the sales tax referendum as “taking peoples money”, but rather a way to get a dedicated funding source for several important services to a major metro area that would have lowered my property taxes to boot. That’s not taking away peoples income, it’s advocating for a more sustainable and secure revenue stream for those services.
I also have no desire to control people’s life decisions. That’s why I’m an advocate for rights regardless of sexual orientation and a woman’s right to choose, among other things.
“I also have no desire to control people’s life decisions”
Excellent. I am glad you stand with me against mandatory health insurance, and against any law that would remove my right to choose regarding health care.
I am really not clear on how forcing people to pay a tax is not “taking peoples money”. I have it, they take it. I was unaware of the grey are there. This budget reduced shared revenue, which will directly force a raise in your property tax (don’t spin. it’s not independent, and you know it, Dan). It increased tipping fees which will raise rubbish collection costs. Utilities will rise. Hospital costs will rise, and the band plays on.
The costs from this budget and it’s spending increases will strike directly at the discretionary spending that folks do. I know my family has cut back a lot, we have been forced to change our lifestyle. Just another blow for small business. I laughed when Democrats announced that 99% of people won’t see a tax increase… then I cried.
I am very disappointed about the death sentence dealt to the Milwaukee Regional Transit Authority.
However, now I am more empowered to get involved. Maybe, this is just a sign that we need to get to work. The RTA needs to be put on another referendum. We need to organize and better represent the public support.
“The pessimist finds the challenge in every opportunity, the optimist finds the opportunity within every challenge.”
I don’t understand the anger towards the protesters. Perhaps it’s too easy to forget the very reason the 4th of July is a holiday? It is extremely American and patriotic to be “anti-government”, as you label it. Disingenuous Republican party hijacking aside, these protests have happened for years from impassioned independents who want America to stay true to its independent roots. Perhaps on the 4th, we can all have one day where we agree to not say something like “They do x, y, or z in UK/France/Canada, and they haven’t crumbled to nothing; why can’t we do it, too”.
When the 5th comes around, we can all go back to acting like that’s a valid point.
The reason Tea Party protesters need to use holidays to protest is that unlike lefty professional activists, we have jobs and holidays are the only time we’re all off work together.
These are real people with businesses and families speaking to their own interests. I don’t see what’s so wrong with it. Are you so thin-skinned you can’t stand the free association of people with whom you disagree? It’s amazing how the left claims to be so tolerant of everything and then lampoons (and tries to silence) diverse ideologies.
IDEOLOGICAL DIVERSITY NOW! :-)
I wasn’t aware of a holiday on April 15th :)
That’s why they were so much smaller than the Independence Day ones will be.
Well without a major news organization hyping them, I’ll be interested to see if you’re right or not. I assume the tea bag folks will be the ones grilling out and setting off fireworks on the 4th to show their displeasure?
“Dear teabaggers: We’ve already got a holiday that celebrates American independence, liberty and freedom. The 4th of July.”
Dear Dan: If we do not act to protect individual liberty, July 4th will become a memorial, not a celebration, of it. Is grilling out later on really such an act of hypocrisy? You’re reaching.
I don’t get all the liberal angst with these people. I’ve never gotten upset over Code Pink protesters because they’re just a bunch of nutcases, but the left is obsessed with the Tea Party protesters which tells me their movement must be having some effect.
It’s not just tea party people who working to protect individual liberty and freedom in this Country. That’s one of the problems I have with those folks trying to co-opt values that EVERY American shares and believes in. It was the same thing during the war from the same two sides… Only “REAL” American’s supported the war in Iraq, and if you didn’t, well… You might want to move to France or something.
The sudden discovery by the tea bag folks that government spending is too high, and our deficits are too large that just happened to coincide with a President from the opposite party is the hypocrisy that I’m pointing out. Where was the outrage against massive deficits last summer?
It’s not an obsession either. More of a bewildered amusement.
By CBO estimates, Mr. Obama has created as much deficit spending in just 6 months as all the other presidents combined. I wish that were a gross exaggeration, but it is not… and he has not saddled us with Obama care yet, nor has cap and tax been implemented to further reduce revenue. Perhaps that is why the teabaggers are suddenly concerned. Odd, isn’t it, that the left railed against the Bush deficit, and yet you folks are silent about the tragedy of our coming debt tsunami. Why is that? Hypocrisy?
From everyone I’ve talked to, rallies were about the same size as they were on 4/15.
This is a movement that will not go away.
Good for them then. I was away from any kind of media so didn’t hear how they played out.
Our previous thread is too narrow (physically) to reply to anymore.
Your argument cuts both ways: you were perturbed by Bush’s (and a Democrat and a GOP Congress’) overspending, but think the Democrat Congress and Obama’s overspending, which occurs on a much larger order of magnitude during a recession, is okay?
You’re associating the protesters with Republicans, but I’m a Libertarian car pooling with two Obama voters to Saturday’s protest. They’re upset that he’s not keeping his promises on no earmarks, line-by-line budget control, and transparency. There are lots of Fair Tax people there as well who usually have no party affiliation. There are no GOP speakers at the Eau Claire protest, although the Constitution Party candidate for governor will speak.
As for liberty, the Democrats do not stand for individual liberty. Everywhere I look Obama seeks to curtail individual freedoms in favor of some sort of collective benefit that shields people from failure, but also stifles success. The Supreme Court has decided that the state can take private property from one owner and give it to another private owner (Kelo decision) and Reid and Pelosi refused to allow GOP bills protecting private property owners to come to a vote. Our own state is telling private business owners that they cannot allow smoking on their own property. My family, that lives in a rental, is subsidizing the mortgages of people who made poor choices. Democrats haven’t stood for individual liberty since JFK and to say otherwise is laughable.
The GOP can be forced to stand up for individual liberty, but they have to be muscled into it, which is why I, and many other protesters, are not Republicans. For most of us, overspending is not a “sudden discovery” but has reached a point where it needs to be stopped.
It bothers me too that these protests are dismissed as Republican political games. But, that is largely the Republican party’s fault. Even so, I would expect intelligent observers to realize that the Republican party’s hijacking of these events is a topic separate from the meaning of them in the first place.
Dan is right that the Republicans have serious credibility problems after spending like Democrats for almost all of Bush’s 8 year term. I and many others opposed this because we are thinking individuals, not political hacks. Dan is also right about the Republicans allowing the neocons to push us into the Iraq war. I and many others opposed this because we are thinking individuals, not political hacks.
No matter who is in power, these protests will happen as long as the federal government continues to grow (new, redundant departments), continues to trample on states’ rights (drug war), continues to put its foot on the neck of individual freedom, and in general continues to expand its power far beyond the prescription of the Constitution. The left can talk about their support of individual freedoms, and to some extent they have a point (as long as we’re talking about groups they think are disadvantaged in some way), but as long as they support the destruction of my right to own what I earn, they only have one leg to stand on.
That said, I don’t think the protests on the 4th will be that much in terms of numbers. That really isn’t the point, though.
Dan,
You have, “…no desire to control people’s life decisions.” And I gather you are not one of those anti-government types that you referred to. Therefore, I you are not against all the laws we live under. But all laws (whether based in liberalism or conservatism) affect people’s life decisions. Thus, you are in favor of controlling people’s life decisions. You just want to control the life decisions that fall in line with your leftist tendencies.
I’m new to your blog, but I assume you agree with the life decisions that will be forced upon people by Obama’s policies. During the campaign, O said that “…
under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket…” If energy prices skyrocket don’t you think that affects life decisions?
I know that you are a family man. What life decisions would you need to make if all your energy bills skyrocketed, because of democrat legislation which you support? “Sorry Honey, we can’t go on vacation this year, or buy groceries today, or get new shoes for our child, or put our child in a private scholl rather than public school, or get you a new coat for winter, because we’re busy paying for O’s skyrocketing energy prices which we support and want to force upon other people, so that their life decisions are also affected.
And by the way, how many life decision will be affected by O’s proclamation (also during the campaign) that, “if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can; it’s just that it will bankrupt them…”
How about the life decisions of future generations that will be affected by O’s “stimulus spending” (show me the millions of jobs being created by this pork and earmark filled money-grubbing monster).
How about the life decisions that will be affected when O takes over health care and you have some sniveling DMV reject bureaucrat telling you that you can’t receive the care you need because his Official Obama-Pelosi Government Statistics Chart says that you’re not worth spending the “government’s resources” on. (Please people, research and read the horror stories coming from other nations that have given in to socialized health care.) So, don’t sit there at your keyboard and tell us that you and those who agree with you “have no desire to control people’s life decisions.”
And it’s just precious that you get upset because TEA Partiers wish to gather on July 4th. You chide these people for wanting to “advance your anti-government rhetoric”. During the past eight years, I heard over and over and over and over and over again from the left with raised noses and condescending tones that, “Dissent is the highest form of patriotism!” But now that many conservatives, some moderates, and yes, even a few liberals dare to get together to dissent against the policies not only of Obama and Pelosi, but also against the gargantuan growth of government and taxes over the past eighty years, you call them “anti-
government”. I’m sorry, maybe I just don’t understand, but does the Obama and liberal point of view encompass the entirety of what government can possibly be? If someone dares to disagree with your view of social contract theory, then they must be opposed to all forms of proper government?
Welcome and thanks for the comment. I think you’re confusing anarchy with the rule of law. Any reasonable person can see why there are certain laws which “control life decisions” which we as a society have agreed upon.
Yes, exactly. But your comment contradicts what you wrote above about not wanting to control people’s life decisions. I guess my point is, that no matter where we fall on the political spectrum we hope the country moves in the direction of our own personal desires. And any of this movement necessarily affects people’s life decisions, which is why elections and the subsequent legislation that they generate are so important. Even The Family Guy, who you were responding to, wants to affect life decisions. He just wants them to be affected in the opposite direction that you do.