joeklein

The Wisconsin right-wing nuts are insistent on our state Mississippi-fying itself by lowering taxes. They like to spend money on prisons and highways, so the cuts to balance out their proposed corporate tax cuts must come out of education, public assistance, mass-transit and parks. I can be for lower taxes, but fix the budget hole made by truth in sentencing, and the urge, started by Thompson and sustained by the highway lobby, to build highways until you have eight lanes to Crivitz. We spend far to much of our state dollars on prisons and highways. The voters should ask, is the concept that "low taxes and low regulation are the key to more business," valid? What if the tax and regulation cutting saga is nothing but Baloney Stock? If our model is Texas and Mississippi, then they should be the states with the most per capita start ups! BUZZZ! Wrong answer! Crunch Trends came up with this map: Interesting article and hypothesis: http://trends.techcrunch.com/2009/09/11/state-sta...

The real issue in running for government is, do you have the guts to put yourself out for public ridicule? If you desire a change for the better, what better place to put ideas to the test, but in the public forum? So let's not ridicule, but respect people who seek public office, especially if their sole motivation is to further the public good. Attack policies, not people. ... and yes I should endeavor to do the same. I honestly believe that I would have done better things for our community than the current County Executive. That I am guilty of not being a professional politician, I confess, this is true. I would like to think that for the most part the good people at Urban Milwaukee, and those within the progressive, trade unionist, and urbanist circles of Milwaukee County would see me as a friend. Is it then a proper thing to call your friends 'silly' for desiring to do right? Doyle’s Decision Could Send Ripples Through Milwaukee’s Political Landscape

"With cars, you can go where you want to go when you want to go. But they also have the most environmental impacts, the most social impacts and the greatest cost to our system - to park it, to enforce it, to run it, to import the oil. All of these things have severe impacts that we really just can't sustain anymore. The other modes have their limitations, too. As a pedestrian, you can only go so far. As a bicyclist you can go a little bit further, as a transit rider you can go furthest, but you can't go where you want to go all the time. There's got to be a way to link all these modes. When you add in car-sharing, bike-sharing and taxis, all of a sudden you have this menu of options that you can use, just like you would a car, without all the impacts." -- Timothy Papandreou "In the early 1920s when every US city of more than 5,000 residents had at least one streetcar line, households spent an average of just 3 percent of household income on transportation. To...

The Cato Institute and the Reason Foundation are the sources and for many of the rail v. bus "studies" cited by Sykes, Belling and Walker. They have an agenda. Take a look at who is connected. The Kock Family lies at the center of the web. They use libertarian doublespeak to argue for disemboweling government regulation so that they can gain special financial advantage by keeping America addicted to oil and automobiles. The people most victimized by the intellectual dishonesty of these organizations are disenfranchised white middle class males who have been brainwashed into supporting political movements that give power and money to these big oil industrialists. David and Charles Koch own virtually all of Koch Industries, an oil, natural gas, and land management firm and the second largest privately owned company in America. based on an annual ranking of the world's wealthiest people compiled and published by Forbes magazine on March 11, 2009, David and Charles Koch ar...

Walker is blind to the future, perhaps that is why he stand in front of a 48 star flag on the Milwaukee County web site. Apparently he thinks he is living before August 21st, 1959 . The County Executive reveals his inability to be either pragmatic or capable of empirical thought through his transit policy. Perhaps this is the product of believing at face value reports produced by the big oil funded Cato Institute and the Reason Foundation . The public should be suspect of these "Libertarian" organizations funded by people seeking their own advantage regardless of the impact on the health and welfare of our society. After all, the Laissez-faire society these "think tanks" advocate is the perfect place for keeping the lower and middle classes under the thumb of big oil. Walker's ideological posturing has been an impediment to the progress of Milwaukee County. He is a roadblock to fixing the problems at Milwaukee County. This is why the Milwaukee County continues...