joeklein

Recent revelations defeat the argument that we needed to wiretap as a reaction to 9/11. http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/11/02/almost-soviet/

The issue of School Choice has often created emotional political divides in our community. It held out for many people of limited income an opportunity to help their children escape from, what they perceived as, a broken public school system. In specifics it works some times, for some people. In the aggregate it has proven to be an expensive experiment with neutral results. My conclusion is underscored by the recent article in the Journal Sentinel " Choice may not improve schools, study says. " It has been my contention for some time that School Choice, while a rightly intentioned movement by some progressive thinking members of our society, has failed to resolve the problems plaguing public education. Here is why, in my humble opinion, School Choice has failed. 1. It is a distraction from having a meaningful discussion on how to alter public education so as to make it relevant to a post industrial, post agricultural society. 2. By putting pots of money out in the public for ...

Dear Jim Doyle, I want to let you know I am against any increase in H-1B visas. The fact that you, as my governor, signed on to a letter to increase H-1B visas is a slap in the face to all IT workers seeking jobs. To claim there is a critical shortage of highly skilled professionals in math and science is a lie. This myth has long ago been debunked by a Duke University study at http://www.issues.org/23.3/wadhwa.html I hope you will listen to voters who have to live with the consequences of jobs being given to H-1B visa workers rather than the corporations who want to give our jobs away. Sincerely, Joe Klein

"I yam what I yam ..." -- Popeye Here is what the bloggers are saying about Joe Klein. Badger Blogger writes ... "By checking his Bio page, we can see that he is yet another East Side tree hugging liberal (oh, they prefer to be called “progressive” now) that wants to make Milwaukee taxpayers pay for a light rail choo-choo that no one will ride… except maybe himself, since he claims to have taken the city bus downtown to register as a candidate." Another cogent and elegantly phrased argument against the child's word for steam engine. Here is a news release about the light rail in Saint Louis that, it was said, nobody would ride. "You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time." -- Abraham Lincoln Wigderson Library & Pub writes ... "I'm not sure what qualifications someone with the occupation of "geek" brings to the position of County...

One of the big problems at Milwaukee County is the lack of creativity by both Scott Walker appointees and the existing bureaucracy. They tend to look for commercial solutions from a semi-closed circle of vendors and consultants. They don't want to take a risk on some of the technologies like Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) that can save Milwaukee County money and thus allow for the preservation of services. Many VoIP carriers provide flat rate lines with unlimited calling in the US and Canada. Significant savings can be incurred using VoIP based PBXs especially if implemented using Open Source based systems such as Asterix. If Federal, State, County, Cites and Villages interconnect over their own fiber networks, the cost of inter agency calling can be reduced to nearly zero. We need to get our heads out of the sand and stop government reliance on on gold plated IT solutions. A mentality that worships big consultants and big business solutions seems to reign supreme in Wisconsin...

One of the revolutionary elements of the Internet is the ability of different network operators to interconnect and exchange data seamlessly. This was made possible by building a systems based on layers of open standards. Much of the information exchanged between different Internet providers flows across exchange points . Typically, exchange points are operated by neutral third parties. Many exchange points are private entities, some are cooperatives. The exchange point operator is responsible for maintenance of the physical infrastructure. A typical exchange point is a large building filled with switches, routers, servers, wire, fiber, power systems and environmental systems. TCP/IP based (the protocol suite behind the Internet) networks have a unique technological twist in that there exists a standardized protocol for defining the policy for exchange of data between different networks. This protocol is called Border Gateway Protocol, or BGP for short. In effect, the exchange point is...

The local right wing blogger often refer to rail mass transit as "choo-choos." Being one who is a terrible speller (hence a frequenter of dictionaries) I note this definition of choo-choo from my on-line dictionary: Choo-choo (noun) : a child's word for a railroad train or locomotive, esp. a steam engine. So are the anti-rail bloggers children, or are they calling pro-rail advocates children? I do not advocate using steam engines for mass transit. Let me state, for the record, that am for electric powered, rail based, mass transit. Below is my reasoning. BTW - Lettered assumptions are listed at the end. Electric powered, rail based transportation costs less to you, me, and society than cars and highways because: Rail uses less land and less energy to transport more people. Less land is removed from the tax base by rail than highways. A double tracked right of way can move more commuters between two points than a four lane highway. The people who use mass transit have more...