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43rd Assembly District

A Libertarian’s View of the WI 43rd Assembly Race: Voter ID

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Wisconsin has thousands of laws, for all manner of restrictions, prohibitions, requirements, limitations, bans, etc. Considering this foundation, there are two ways to look at adding new laws.

Some people will say that more laws are needed to shape and mold conduct in the right direction, to guide society to a better way of thinking and acting. Others will contend that additional laws should be a matter of last resort, and enacted only after meeting a burden of necessity.

Libertarians fall in the second group.

New Voter ID Requirements. These recent years have seen worrying about the integrity of Wisconsin’s elections. There are fears that our elections allow fraudulent voting, of a kind that’s noticeable and significant. For this reason, some would like us to enact new voter ID laws.

In all Wisconsin, where is the compelling evidence of significant harm from supposed voter fraud that would justify new voting requirements?

There isn’t any. Wisconsin doesn’t have a voter fraud problem that justifies changes in our law. There’s talk about fraud, but there’s no evidence that it is an actionable problem.

There is compelling academic evidence that new voter ID laws would place hurdles before hundreds of thousands of Wisconsinites:

But [Circuit Court Judge] Flanagan noted that birth certificates are required to get the IDs and voters who don’t have them must pay for them. He said more than 300,000 voters do not have an acceptable form of ID.

“The cost and the difficulty of obtaining documents necessary to apply for a (Division of Motor Vehicles) photo ID is a substantial burden which falls most heavily upon low-income individuals,” his decision said.

A demographer who testified for the state, Peter Morrison, argued virtually all eligible voters had a photo ID, but University of Wisconsin-Madison political scientist Kenneth Mayer estimated more than 301,000 do not have a driver’s license or state ID card. That’s 9.3% of registered voters.

Some Republicans, some conservatives, and some members of Tea Party groups worry about how supposed voter fraud might influence our elections. They would do better to consider our own electoral history, during a time (as now) when voter ID laws were not in force.

Gov. Thompson, Sen. Johnson, Atty. General Van Hollen, and Gov. Walker (twice in a year and a half) won statewide office without voter ID laws in force. The absence of additional restrictions on voting didn’t keep them from victory. The fear that fraud threatens GOP success in Wisconsin is unfounded, and almost embarrassingly overwrought.

Republicans can and do win here (often by solid margins); they’re not being disadvantaged. If anything, they’ve been on a winning streak.

The Left’s version of these concerns is the suspicion that voting machines in places like Ohio have been rigged. There’s a cottage industry built on the proposition that voting machines in Ohio in 2004 were somehow rigged in George W. Bush’s favor.

They weren’t. George W. Bush won Ohio because more people in that state voted for him.

Rep. Wynn, in his campaign flyer taxpayer-funded newsletter from last year highlights his commitment to new voter ID laws.

It’s actually a commitment to make it harder for citizens to vote.

When Rep. Wynn attends a candidate forum later tonight, or when he travels throughout the 43rd District, perhaps he’ll look out and consider how many of the people he sees would have a harder time voting because of the additional restrictions he supports.

The Candidates’ Questionnaire Responses. Over at the Whitewater-Area League of Women Voters’ website, there are answers from both candidates to a questionnaire from the League.

Candidate Forum. Tonight at 7:30 PM, the two candidates for the 43rd Assembly District will be at Timmerman Auditorium in Hyland Hall, on the UW-Whitewater campus.

Tomorrow: Debate recap.

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 10.30.12

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Good morning.

Whitewater’s Tuesday brings partly sunny skies, a high near 46, and north winds at 15 to 25 miles per hour.

This evening in Whitewater, at 7:30 PM in Timmerman Auditorium (Hyland Hall) on the UW-Whitewater campus, there will be a forum with Rep. Evan Wynn and Rep. Andy Jorgensen, candidates for the 43rd Assembly District. (Update: Now corrected, thanks to a kind reader’s note, to post both candidates’ names. It’s a two-person forum: one won’t be debating himself.)

On this day in 1938, Orson Welles scares America:

Orson Welles causes a nationwide panic with his broadcast of “War of the Worlds”—a realistic radio dramatization of a Martian invasion of Earth.

Orson Welles was only 23 years old when his Mercury Theater company decided to update H.G. Wells’ 19th-century science fiction novel War of the Worlds for national radio. Despite his age, Welles had been in radio for several years, most notably as the voice of “The Shadow” in the hit mystery program of the same name. “War of the Worlds” was not planned as a radio hoax, and Welles had little idea of the havoc it would cause.

The show began on Sunday, October 30, at 8 p.m. A voice announced: “The Columbia Broadcasting System and its affiliated stations present Orson Welles and the Mercury Theater on the air in ‘War of the Worlds’ by H.G. Wells.”

Sunday evening in 1938 was prime-time in the golden age of radio, and millions of Americans had their radios turned on. But most of these Americans were listening to ventriloquist Edgar Bergen and his dummy “Charlie McCarthy” on NBC and only turned to CBS at 8:12 p.m. after the comedy sketch ended and a little-known singer went on. By then, the story of the Martian invasion was well underway.

Welles introduced his radio play with a spoken introduction, followed by an announcer reading a weather report. Then, seemingly abandoning the storyline, the announcer took listeners to “the Meridian Room in the Hotel Park Plaza in downtown New York, where you will be entertained by the music of Ramon Raquello and his orchestra.” Putrid dance music played for some time, and then the scare began. An announcer broke in to report that “Professor Farrell of the Mount Jenning Observatory” had detected explosions on the planet Mars. Then the dance music came back on, followed by another interruption in which listeners were informed that a large meteor had crashed into a farmer’s field in Grovers Mills, New Jersey.

Soon, an announcer was at the crash site describing a Martian emerging from a large metallic cylinder. “Good heavens,” he declared, “something’s wriggling out of the shadow like a gray snake. Now here’s another and another one and another one. They look like tentacles to me … I can see the thing’s body now. It’s large, large as a bear. It glistens like wet leather. But that face, it… it … ladies and gentlemen, it’s indescribable. I can hardly force myself to keep looking at it, it’s so awful. The eyes are black and gleam like a serpent. The mouth is kind of V-shaped with saliva dripping from its rimless lips that seem to quiver and pulsate.”

The Martians mounted walking war machines and fired “heat-ray” weapons at the puny humans gathered around the crash site. They annihilated a force of 7,000 National Guardsman, and after being attacked by artillery and bombers the Martians released a poisonous gas into the air. Soon “Martian cylinders” landed in Chicago and St. Louis. The radio play was extremely realistic, with Welles employing sophisticated sound effects and his actors doing an excellent job portraying terrified announcers and other characters. An announcer reported that widespread panic had broken out in the vicinity of the landing sites, with thousands desperately trying to flee. In fact, that was not far from the truth.

Here’s that full radio program:

Google’s daily puzzle asks a question of literature: “Which nobel prize winning author explored philosophy through the point of view of English literature’s earliest monster?”

43rd Assembly District

A Libertarian’s View of the WI 43rd Assembly Race: Protectionism

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No American ever became popular defending Chinese manufacturing. But purchases of less-expensive foreign goods free comsumers and communities to invest and spend on higher-end American products. That’s why I’m opposed to Rep. Jorgensen’s proposal to limit Wisconsin communities’ purchases of infrastructure goods produced in China (or anywhere else).

Protectionism is the wrong direction for the 43rd, or anywhere else.

I’m sensitive that people are legitimately worried about their jobs, and that those who have lost jobs are scarcely optimistic about free trade. It’s still a good policy.

Forcing communities to buy American, at higher prices, limits their ability to purchase other American goods or services.

(China is unpopular, and there are two reasons that she should be. Her government oppresses political dissenters, and so is a threat to her own people’s safe, free expression. That same government also bullies its immediate neighbors, and threatens their freedom of navigation in the South China Sea with wildly excessive territorial claims.)

But that’s not a policy of Chinese businesspeople, and we’ve no reason to respond to the Chinese government’s actions with policies that limit purchases by American cities, businesses, or consumers.

Rep. Wynn wrote in reply to Jorgensen’s proposal that, after all, it may be a violation of existing trade treaties.

Perhaps, but that’s not half of why the proposal’s a mistaken one. It’s a mistaken one – a bad idea that will make prices and costs higher – as a fundamental misunderstanding of the benefits of free trade. Really, it’s a misunderstanding of the benefits of free exchange with anyone, whether here or abroad.

One sees that almost everyone – Pres. Obama, Gov. Romney, U.S. Senate & House candidates, Wisconsin legislative candidates, one and all, etc. – wants to show a strong hand against Chinese manufacturing.

What’s American, By the Way? When someone buys an iPhone, she buys something ‘Designed in Cupertino, but Assembled in China.’ Is that American or Chinese? Apple’s an American company that rose to the top of the tech world by developing mutually productive relationships with foreign manufacturers.

No one forced those arrangements on them – Apple and FoxConn, for example, freely chose to transact business.

What’s Infrastructure? Roads, bridges, etc., one hears. Sure enough, that’s true. But is that infrastructure any more important to America than the computers, phones, or cars that are often assembled abroad? They’re critical to our success and prosperity, too: we’re richer and more productive and happier for them.

Infrastructure sounds important, but so are all those other goods Americans enjoy.

A Little Candor About Trade and Outsourcing. What most candidates at the federal, state, or local level won’t say, but libertarians will:

Trade policy’s reached all the way to the WI 43rd Assembly race. No matter how pressing the topic for voters, an approach that limits purchases from abroad is short-sighted and expensive for Americans.

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 10.29.12

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Good morning.

Whitewater’s week begins with a sunny day and a high of forty-eight.

On this day in 1998, a pioneering astronaut returned to space, almost forty years later:

Glenn, a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Marine Corps, was among the seven men chosen by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in 1959 to become America’s first astronauts. A decorated pilot, he had flown nearly 150 combat missions during World War II and the Korean War. In 1957, he made the first nonstop supersonic flight across the United States, flying from Los Angeles to New York in three hours and 23 minutes.

In April 1961, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin was the first man in space, and his spacecraft, Vostok 1, made a full orbit before returning to Earth. Less than one month later, American Alan B. Shepard, Jr., became the first American in space when his Freedom 7 spacecraft was launched on a suborbital flight. American “Gus” Grissom made another suborbital flight in July, and in August Soviet cosmonaut Gherman Titov spent more than 25 hours in space aboard Vostok 2, making 17 orbits. As a technological power, the United States was looking very much second-rate compared with its Cold War adversary. If the Americans wanted to dispel this notion, they needed a multi-orbital flight before another Soviet space advance arrived.

On February 20, 1962, NASA and Colonel John Glenn accomplished this feat with the flight of Friendship 7, a spacecraft that made three orbits of the Earth in five hours. Glenn was hailed as a national hero, and on February 23 President John F. Kennedy visited him at Cape Canaveral. Glenn later addressed Congress and was given a ticker-tape parade in New York City.

Out of a reluctance to risk the life of an astronaut as popular as Glenn, NASA essentially grounded the “Clean Marine” in the years after his historic flight. Frustrated with this uncharacteristic lack of activity, Glenn turned to politics and in 1964 announced his candidacy for the U.S. Senate from his home state of Ohio and formally left NASA. Later that year, however, he withdrew his Senate bid after seriously injuring his inner ear in a fall from a horse. In 1970, following a stint as a Royal Crown Cola executive, he ran for the Senate again but lost the Democratic nomination to Howard Metzenbaum. Four years later, he defeated Metzenbaum, won the general election, and went on to win reelection three times. In 1984, he unsuccessfully sought the Democratic nomination for president.

Google’s daily puzzle as about a particular competitor: “Who is the competitive eater who has been nicknamed after one of two poisonous spiders found in the U.S?” more >>

43rd Assembly District

A Libertarian’s View of the WI 43rd Assembly Race: Collective Bargaining Changes of Act 10

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Wisconsin discussed, debated, protested for or against, and saw legislative & gubernatorial recall elections over Gov. Walker’s collective bargaining changes. It was, in fact, a national and international story. These changes were easily the biggest political issue for Wisconsin in a generation – with protests and recall elections unprecedented in our history.

How odd, then, that of the two candidates running for the WI 43rd Assembly District, only one even mentions clearly and expressly on his campaign website restrictions placed on workers’ collective bargaining.

Andy Jorgensen – but not Evan Wynn — refers plainly to these changes on the ‘Issues/Where I Stand’ section of his campaign website?    Perhaps Rep. Wynn doesn’t remember what he was doing on April 6, 2011.  Allow me to refresh his memory:

Rep. Evan Wynn stands with Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker at a ceremonial signing of his budget repair bill at the State Capitol building in Madison, Wisconsin on Wednesday, April 6, 2011. The bill repealed most collective bargaining options of public employees. (AP Photo/Wisconsin State Journal, John Hart)
 

I hold an AP license to this photo, as it speaks a thousand words, while about collective bargaining on his website (as of this post, so very close to the election) Rep. Wynn still provides not even one direct, clear word.

(See, Jorgensen’s issues page and Wynn’s issues page and budget highlights. I’ve saved screenshots of the candidates’ respective campaign websites, as of this post, which any American may do of any campaign site as fair use. It’s a right worth exercising and defending.)

Although I support significant and permanent reductions in the size of government, I did not support reductions in (to my mind) all workers’ legitimate rights of association. Some libertarians supported Gov. Walker’s enacted, collective bargaining restrictions, others opposed them. (A solid summary of libertarian view of workers’ union rights, recognizing the competing needs and interests involved, is available from Jacob Levy in a post entitled, ‘Thoughts on unions.’)

To Gov. Walker’s credit, when he ran in the 2012 recall, he ran on all his programs, including express mention of his reductions to workers’ bargaining rights. He held this position throughout the recall elections, and espoused it both in Wisconsin and across America. For his open and express defense of Act 10, he gained loyal Republican supporters in Wisconsin and places far beyond. He might have said the same before the 2010 election, but he was certainly upfront in June 2012.

Although I disagree with his restrictions, I respect that he ran on them plainly in 2012, and I think most Wisconsinites do, too.

In the end, one doesn’t win with people, but on issues, forthrightly stated.

Tomorrow: China and the WI Assembly Race.

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 10.28.12

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Good morning.

Sunday brings clear, sunny skies to Whitewater, with a high of forty-six, and north winds around five miles per hour.

On this day in 1886, Pres. Cleveland dedicated the Stature of Liberty in New York Harbor:

Originally known as “Liberty Enlightening the World,” the statue was proposed by the French historian Edouard de Laboulaye to commemorate the Franco-American alliance during the American Revolution. Designed by French sculptor Frederic-Auguste Bartholdi, the 151-foot statue was the form of a woman with an uplifted arm holding a torch. Its framework of gigantic steel supports was designed by Eugene-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc and Alexandre-Gustave Eiffel, the latter famous for his design of the Eiffel Tower in Paris.

In February 1877, Congress approved the use of a site on New York Bedloe’s Island, which was suggested by Bartholdi. In May 1884, the statue was completed in France, and three months later the Americans laid the cornerstone for its pedestal in New York Harbor. In June 1885, the dismantled Statue of Liberty arrived in the New World, enclosed in more than 200 packing cases. Its copper sheets were reassembled, and the last rivet of the monument was fitted on October 28, 1886, during a dedication presided over by President Cleveland and attended by numerous French and American dignitaries.

From Google’s daily puzzle for today,  a science question: “What did the great-granddaughter of John “Crazy” Fitch invent as a way of reducing damage done by servants?”

43rd Assembly District

A Libertarian’s View of the WI 43rd Assembly Race: A Newsletter for the 43rd

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Most legislators send newsletters, at taxpayers’ expense, to constituents. Although I know that some residents don’t have computer access, it’s still a lot of paper, sent to a lot of homes. Many of these so-named newsletters are no more than thinly-disguised campaign flyers. Republicans, Democrats, the few independents who might be in a state legislature somewhere: they all send these newsletters. We’d be better off if they did so at their own expense.

Embedded below is a newsletter that Rep. Evan Wynn sent to constituents after the 2011 legislative session.   In format and style, it’s representative of many others.   I’ll off a few remarks, after the embed.

What’s Inside?  Four photos of Rep. Wynn, an introductory letter, three selected initiatives inside the newsletter (concealed carry, the biennial budget, road repair), contact information, and a summary of other proposals on the back cover.

What’s Not Here?  I saved this newsletter after I received it (as I am a resident of the 43rd), because it struck me as so very odd for what it didn’t include.  If you were a Wisconsin resident in 2011, you didn’t just hear about an effort to balance the budget: you heard, and debated, over the means by which Gov. Walker intended – and did – balance the budget.  He and the Republicans who supported him balanced the budget – by Gov. Walker’s on account – by changes to longstanding collective bargaining laws, affecting public-sector employees in state and local government.  

They might have done it other ways; they did it one way.

All America watched the debate in Wisconsin over Walker’s effort (Act 10), the protests of thousands it spawned, the recall of a few legislators it sparked, and the successful defeat of a recall of Gov. Walker, himself.  

(Readers know that I am a libertarian, and not a supporter of Gov. Walker.  Nonetheless, Gov. Walker wasn’t merely successful in overcoming the recall, he did so by a greater margin in 2011 than the one by which he was elected governor in 2010.)

For Walker, it wasn’t merely the ends, but also the means, by which he balanced the budget that mattered.

Why wouldn’t Rep. Wynn proudly tout a record that expressly described the means that our governor and Rep. Wynn’s own party believed were essential to their goals?  Why omit from mention the very actions of which Gov. Walker and other straightforward Republicans are so very proud?  

I believe that Gov. Walker should have run on the changes he later proposed after he was elected. He deserves credit, however, for being direct and unwavering in support of those proposals once he offered them – he was willing to run on those sweeping reductions to collective bargaining rights in the June 2012 recall.

Why wasn’t Wynn as direct and clear in his newsletter?  To write about the Wisconsin budget while omitting mention of historic reductions in collective bargaining rights was hardly a stand-up effort.

The Other, Odd Omission.   Rep. Wynn lives in Whitewater, a multi-ethnic city, with an increasingly diverse population.   How very odd, then, that among his list of ‘Legislative Proposals, Initiatives, and Ongoing Work,’ he omits mention of his co-sponsorship of Assembly Bill 173, a bill that would have brought Arizona-like immigration restrictions to Wisconsin, of all places.  

The bill failed to pass only in March of this year.  He introduced it as  co-sponsor on 6.8.2011.

What possible credibility is their for a legislator to say that he’s fighting for people if, in fact, the legislator conceals the very things for which he’s fighting as a sponsor?

That’s not direct and forthright representation for Whitewater.

Tomorrow: The Collective Bargaining Changes of Act 10.

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 10.27.12

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Good morning.

Saturday in Whitewater brings a lovely October day, with a high of forty-four and sunny skies.

On this day in 1775, King George III spoke to the British Parliament about growing rebellion in the American colonies:

…King George III speaks before both houses of the British Parliament to discuss growing concern about the rebellion in America, which he viewed as a traitorous action against himself and Great Britain. He began his speech by reading a “Proclamation of Rebellion” and urged Parliament to move quickly to end the revolt and bring order to the colonies.

The king spoke of his belief that “many of these unhappy people may still retain their loyalty, and may be too wise not to see the fatal consequence of this usurpation, and wish to resist it, yet the torrent of violence has been strong enough to compel their acquiescence, till a sufficient force shall appear to support them.” With these words, the king gave Parliament his consent to dispatch troops to use against his own subjects, a notion that his colonists believed impossible.

Just as the Continental Congress expressed its desire to remain loyal to the British crown in the Olive Branch Petition, delivered to the monarch on September 1, so George III insisted he had “acted with the same temper; anxious to prevent, if it had been possible, the effusion of the blood of my subjects; and the calamities which are inseparable from a state of war; still hoping that my people in America would have discerned the traitorous views of their leaders, and have been convinced, that to be a subject of Great Britain, with all its consequences, is to be the freest member of any civil society in the known world.” King George went on to scoff at what he called the colonists’ “strongest protestations of loyalty to me,” believing them disingenuous, “whilst they were preparing for a general revolt.”

On this day in 1864, a Waukesha soldier made a particular contribution to the Union war effort:

1864 – Waukesha Soldier Sinks Confederate Ship
On this date William Cushing led an expedition to sink the Confederate ram, the Albermarle, which had imposed a blockade near Plymouth, North Carolina and had been sinking Union ships. Cushing’s plan was extremely dangerous and only he and one other soldier escaped drowning or capture. Cushing pulled very close to the Confederate ironclad and exploded a torpedo under it while under heavy fire. Cushing’s crew abandonded ship as it began to sink. The Albemarle also sunk. Cushing received a “letter of thanks” from Congress and was promoted to Lieutenant Commander. He died in 1874 due to ill health and is buried in the Naval Cemetery at Annapolis, Maryland. [Source: Badger Saints and Sinners by Fred L. Holmes, p.274-285]

Google’s daily puzzle offers a history question: “The daughter of Abraham Lincoln’s nominee for the post of minister to Spain invited her fiance to Lincoln’s second inauguration. Who was her fiance?

City, Corporate Welfare, Green Energy Holdings, Waste Digesters

The End of the Waste Digester Proposal in Whitewater

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Earlier this week, I posted about a closed-session agenda item of the Tech Park Board about ‘negotiations’ with Green Energy Holdings concerning a waste digester in the city. Of the scope of those negotiations I had no idea. As readers surely know, I think there are sound objections of municipal finance, community development, economic policy, environmental protection, and open & responsible government to the idea. One holds one’s views sincerely, and so a resumption of the dodgy idea – however unsound and improbable – would have justified a diligent effort in opposition.

As it turns out, that ambiguous Tech Park Board discussion item seems to have been about the collapse of the project, and its out-of-town backers’ thousands in delinquent rent for office space at the Innovation Center.

One guesses as much from an open session discussion at the 10.25.12 Community Development Authority meeting. The discussion of the waste-digester project begins at 4:20 on the video:

Community Development Authority 10/25/2012 from Whitewater Community TV on Vimeo.

We may all be grateful when one of the worst ideas in recent memory is entirely behind our small and beautiful community. Turning away from that bad idea was, for so many reasons, a very good thing for Whitewater.