folkbum's rambles and rants

by folkbum

Asking Sarah Palin for advice on how to be governor is like asking David Lee Roth for advice on how to lead a rock band.

Labels: Sarah Palin, Scott Walker

by folkbum

There is no greater duty than to defend the liberty of your contrymen. Thanks to all who have served, are serving, and will serve.

by folkbum

One of the things that the late Gerald Bracey did for years is produce his annual "Bracey Report," which is a look at the various education reform efforts over the course of the past year, good and bad, with a careful examination of the data.

This year's report (.pdf), released today, is particularly timely for us here in Milwaukee and Wisconsin. Today, a group of well meaning but seriously misguided Democrats are introducing a bill, announced two weeks ago, that would strip meaningful control of the Milwaukee Public Schools from the elected board and place it in the hands of the mayor. (Details here.)

Bracey takes the idea of mayoral control on full force, and he is not kind to the idea. Using National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) data, Bracey looks at claims about New York's and Chicago's schools under mayoral control, and finds the claims of great success to be flat-out false. He comes very close to literally calling Arne Duncan, late of Chicago and now US Secretary of Education, a liar, and he is no kinder to Mayor Bloomberg and Joel Klein New York.

Bracey finds that the achievement gaps are wider, graduation rates are no better, and the regimes established under the mayors in those cities are oppressively undemocratic.

(As an aside: I still get angry thinking about the abomination that is No Child Left Behind, and that its existence is entirely premised on the utterly mythical "Houston Miracle" supposedly spearheaded by George W. Bush's first Secretary of Education Rod Paige. Now we have this "Race to the Top" premised on the mythical success of Chicago's schools under Arne Duncan. I thought history was supposed to wait a bit longer before repeating itself.)

Here's Bracey's conculsion:

A close look at the two most visible exemplars of mayoral control, Chicago and New York, yields results that counter the image created by those in control. 'Reforms' that are supposed to help children do better are primarily used to make the adults who control the schools look good. Performance on tests that are subject to manipulation show improvement. Performance on tests that are free of manipulation show no improvement and no closing of ethnic achievement gaps. In reading the literature about the mayoral systems, one repeatedly encounters words like bully, authoritarian, autocratic, arbitrary, intrusive, despotic, dictatorial, disenfranchisement, rubber stamp, exclusion (of parents) even 'Brezhnev-era Soviet Union.' [. . .] Now, Arne Duncan aids, abets—and requires—this version of reform with the lure of big government grants.

In short, Bracey is just the latest in long series of policy and educational researchers to raise serious questions about the efficacy of mayoral control of urban school districts. Every data-backed, peer-reviewed study I have seen of the question comes to the same conclusion: mayoral control doesn't change achievement rates of large urban districts. Given the significant downsides to making such a change in Milwaukee--including opening a racial rift in this city the size of which we haven't seen in decades--and the absence of any data suggesting city schools do better under mayoral control, it would behoove our legislators to reconsider the proposal on the table.

Yes, yes, I get the whole thing about "Race to the Top" money and whatnot. But as I have written before, chasing worthless reforms in pursuit of grant money is a proven losing proposition. It's demeaning and degrading and distracting, and, again, not worth the consequences. If what it takes to earn the money is ultimately to do further disservice to our students, the screw the money, I say.

I don't want to dance to Arne Duncan's music, especially knowing that the melody is a pack of lies to begin with. Our legislators shouldn't give in to the music, either.

Labels: Education, Milwaukee Public Schools

by folkbum

Not one of the local conservative bloggers who used unusually cold days in September to mock "global warming" has noted the recent unusually warm days in November.

Labels: Global Warming

by bert
Here is another transparent tactic used by on-air pundits of the right wing in order to mangle the truth and score points. I call it talk-radio taxidermy. What you do is after a story is dead and gone, you doctor up the corpse to represent some scene that never was.

This tactic is most useful when your right-wing smears could not adhere to the living truth at the time. But maybe later, when memories fade, you can fool your listeners by posing and grooming this dead story to reflect what it never meant. The Iraq War is one example. You will continue to hear this year a persistent subordinate clause that "Bush achieved victory".

This morning, Jay Weber on WISN-AM was, I guess, trying to tell us that Barack Obama doesn't care about soldiers. You see, the retiree George W. Bush traveled within his own state and without the press to visit Fort Hood over the weekend. Good for George Bush. You see, Obama has not yet visited.

Then came the doctored-up corpse. Weber said something today such as: remember when Obama was going to visit injured soldiers in Germany during his campaign and then called off the visit because reporters were not allowed to go along?

The more nuanced story is covered here with some integrity by the Talking Points Memo web site. The army changed its ground rules for the planned Obama visit to the Landstuhl base in the middle of Obama's European trip in the summer of 2008.

The Obama campaign seems to have concluded that to contest those changed rules or continue with the visit, if possible at all under the new rules, would send the wrong signals. If anything, the motive was to avoid politicizing such a visit. That's far from calling it off when they found they could not politicize it, which was what Weber wants the story to be.

The fact is that right-wingers relish the anger produced by the Fort Hood shootings. Because any pundit worth his or her salt should be able to find a means to refashion and redirect anger so that it aims toward blame of a democrat.

After this Fort Hood story also goes dormant, go back and tally the on-air minutes devoted to Obama -- who is sort of peripheral to this story -- versus the minutes devoted to Amy Krueger, Russell Seager, or Amber Bahr .

Labels: Barack Obama, Fort Hood Massacre, WISN-AM

by folkbum

Reagan-era unemployment numbers mean we should be demanding a return to Reagan-era tax rates.

Labels: Economy, Taxes

by folkbum



I have always loved this song, but what makes the video for me is the Wayne's World quality production. The zoom in up the nostrils shot is archetypal, of course, but it doesn't really make anyone attractive.

Labels: Music

by folkbum

Puts whatever stresses and problems you have at your own job in perspective, no? Thoughts with them, please.

By Keith R. Schmitz

Looking for light for what for them are the darkest of places, the right has been chaffing over the notion that their Stalinization program in the GOP led to a loss of the 23rd district for the Republican Party for the first time in over 100 years, based on what they call the mainstream media "meme." The claim is that a Democrat Michael McNulty held that seat in the late 1990's and into this century, so the MSM is in their minds, wrong as usual.

Turns out their breathless protests were based on something that appeared in all places, Wikipedia. Whenever they can, they will pick up a fumble and run with it, even when it is whistled dead because it leaves a trail of misinformation on the nets that their minions will pick up and repeat for months to come.

If they would have double checked their "facts" they would have found in places such as the contemporary report in the New York Times and in the Library of Congress that McNulty served in the 21st. The memorable Sherwood Boehlert won the 23rd in 1998.

By the way, Wikipedia moved McNulty's seat to the 21st.

Please play again. Thanks you.

Labels: 21st NY, 23rd NY, Congress, McNulty, punked

by folkbum

From a man who once had the gall to call me a misogynist.

Labels: Tom McMahon

by folkbum

Most disappointing, I think, in Maine, where once again the reactionary forces of bigotry turned out in greater numbers than the forces of goodness and light, and repealed the state's same-sex marriage law. The civil rights efforts of this generation have been dealt another severe setback. (At the same time, Washington State seems to have approved fully equal rights for civil unions; good for them.)

The Virginia race suggests two things: One, Democrats will have to work very hard--and will need to recapture or somehow replace the personally inspirational figure of Barack Obama--to spur base turnout in 2010. It doesn't seem that the voters who elected Obama in Virginia rejected him last night; rather, they stayed home, and that's a different, but equally deadly, problem. Two, it suggests that contra the tea-party philosophy, Republicans who run away from the crazy (Bob McDonnell did everything he could to paint himself as a reasonable moderate) can win. Put that up against NY-23, where the in-all-but-name Republican went the Full Palin, and lost a seat that Republicans had held since 1850 to the moderate Democrat. (The other federal race, CA-10, also went to the Democrat. Two races does not a trend make--it takes three!--but clearly voters did not reject Nancy Pelosi, either, last night.)

In New Jersey, I think the lesson is that when things are sucky, it's difficult for an incumbent to win, even against a scandal-mired candidate. (I'm sure many Republicans believe this is the lesson of 2008.) NJ's economic climate is ugly--much moreso than Virginia's--and the vote there is clearly a rejection of current policies in a way that Virginia's vote, where there was no incumbent and the Democrat was not all that closely tied to his predecessor, was probably not.

More locally, the North Shore once again suggests it's not necessarily going to be receptive to the Full Palin--no tax is a good tax--in the future, either. Not that I love taxes or that I think the first answer to any question is to raise them, but the tea-party vanguard has at its core the polar opposite of that message, and it did not win last night in New York, in Whitefish Bay, or anywhere else.

And one final question remains, one year out from 2010: Who's our Democratic candidate for governor? I said it wouldn't be me, but clearly they must be getting pretty far along the list of people ahead of me who would all have to say no before it's my turn. I mean, seriously, guys. Someone's gotta step up.

Labels: 2009 Elections

by folkbum

... my Comedy Sportz show or the County budget hearing. I suppose the budget thing was more sadly tragicomic, eh?

Special shout-out to the Audubon contingent who came out to the show. Good to see you all again!

Also: Regular blogging should resume again after my in-laws leave this weekend. Busybusybusy.

by folkbum

Look, I know that you want nothing more than to laugh at me. Hell, many of you are probably doing that very thing right now from the convenience of your own home. However, if you would rather do it in person, for free, you can, Monday night. Come on over to Comedy Sportz Milwaukee at 7 PM. My improv classmates and I are putting on a free showcase performance, and we need an audience to suggest stupid and embarrassing things for us to do. Plus the bar will be open!

by bert

I get the overall point from the writer in today's New York Times about how jarring are the regional differences in Iraq versus those between two Midwestern states:

The invisible line that separates Iraqi Kurdistan from Iraq’s lower
provinces should be little different than crossing from, say, Michigan into Illinois. . .

But I guess Alissa J. Rubin or others on the East Coast wouldn't bother to know that Michigan and Illinois don't share a border. (To be fair, I don't spend much time out East and I'm never sure if places like Delaware and New Jersey butt up against each other???)

It reminds me of the famous drawing by Saul Steinberg from a 1976 New Yorker magazine cover.

Labels: New York Times

by bert
The insurance industry would not hold a gun to our heads in order to kill any reform of health care. That's because they've paid good money to have lawmakers such as Rep. Paul Ryan do that for them.

Here is Ryan this week on the floor of the House warning that premiums will more than double if the health-care-reform proposals that he and the industry dislike were to become law.



What a coincidence. Because, speaking of the insurance business, Ryan happens to feed at their lobby trough.

According to the Center for Responsive Politics, the insurance business is a close second in the ranking of industries as a source of his campaign contributions. His $57,550 worth of contributions in this election cycle from either individuals or PACs tied to insurance is about four times the average contribution the industry devotes to individual lawmakers. Ryan ranks in the top 20 of all recipients of insurance lobbyist largesse in the House.

Unfortunately for those pimping Ryan, this scare tactic doesn't work on people who are already shell-shocked by exploding insurance costs. Oh, no, not rising premiums!!

According to the National Coalition on Health Care, premium costs for both employers and workers has risen on average 131 percent over the last decade. A White House report finds some states with increases over that period as high as 150 percent.

So Ryan's threat, when you look at the numbers, boils down to a claim that me and my boys will keep doing to you what we have already done. The worse that can happen is more of the same.

Incidentally, Ryan has also used scare tactics about threats to Medicare in his dutiful service to the insurance industry and its fight against reform. Kelly Gallaher of the Racine area did a good job of exposing this.

Labels: health care reform, Paul Ryan

by folkbum



Kind of a depressing song--Foucault is known for that--but if you want the funny, you have to come see me at Comedy Sportz Monday, 11/2, at 7 PM. That show is free and guaranteed to make you laugh.

Labels: Music

by folkbum

It's the sort of thing I would do if I were in charge, which is why I'm not running for governor. WARNING: Not safe for work, small children, or people who have never read blogs before.

by folkbum

Why haven't those idiots gone Galt yet?

by folkbum

Dana Milbank, this morning: "For Reid, [introducing a bill with a public option] was an admission of the formidable power of liberal interest groups."

Recent polling:

• USA Today/Gallup Poll. Oct. 16-19, 2009: If Congress passes a health care bill, do you think it should or should not include a public, government-run insurance plan to compete with plans offered by private insurance companies? Should, 50%
• CNN/Opinion Research Corporation Poll. Oct. 16-18, 2009: Would you favor or oppose creating a public health insurance option administered by the federal government that would compete with plans offered by private health insurance companies? Favor, 61%
• ABC News/Washington Post Poll. Oct. 15-18, 2009: Would you support or oppose having the government create a new health insurance plan to compete with private health insurance plans? Support, 76%
• CBS News Poll. Oct. 5-8, 2009: Would you favor or oppose the government offering everyone a government-administered health insurance plan -- something like the Medicare coverage that people 65 and older get -- that would compete with private health insurance plans? Favor, 62%
• Ipsos/McClatchy Poll conducted by Ipsos Public Affairs. Oct. 1-5, 2009: One of the points being debated is whether or not the government should create a public health insurance plan as an alternative to private insurance plans. Public plan is necessary, 53%
• Quinnipiac University Poll. Sept. 29-Oct. 5, 2009: Do you support or oppose giving people the option of being covered by a government health insurance plan that would compete with private plans? Support, 61%
• Pew Research Center Poll. Sept. 30-Oct. 4, 2009: Would you favor or oppose a government health insurance plan to compete with private health insurance plans? Favor, 55%

Labels: Health Care

by folkbum

If elected, I will not serve. Even if it means no one runs ...

More seriously, I was looking forward to campaigning for Barbara Lawton. I think a lot of the so-called "serious people" on the right assumed she was a lightweight who would never connect with voters. I disagree. Today's news is surprising and disappointing.

... adding, it is supremely disheartening that in a blue state like this, the two likely candidates remaining--unless Ron Kind changes his mind (which is not the end of the world)--are the also-rans from eight years ago. Where the hell is our leadership development?

Labels: 2010 Elections, Barbara Lawton

by folkbum

Comments may not be working right, and this site might be slow to load, too. Happy Monday!

Seems fine now. Flame away.

by folkbum

1. One of the best, longest-standing, and most important bloggers on the planet is about to get evicted; if you can help--I can't, times being what they are--you should.

2. We've been turning away the neighborhood kids and I had to rake the leaves myself today because my labor is free. Ugh.

Labels: Economy

by bert
Predictably -- and right-wing radio shows are always predictable – the talk shows of our local AM stations WTMJ and WISN spent last week hammering the White House’s criticism of Fox News.

What's provoked their push-back was that President Obama’s staff members said in interviews since last Sunday that we Americans, and especially other reporters, should all just stop pretending Fox is journalism.

Dan Peiffer, an Obama spokesman, said "we simply decided to stop abiding by the fiction, which is aided and abetted by the mainstream press, that Fox is a traditional news organization.” Anita Dunn, another White House flak, stated the obvious when she said Fox News is an arm of the Republican Party.

If Fox’s defenders had an argument it was that you can’t confuse commentators in the evening such as Beck or Hannity with the serious, balanced journalism the Fox channel presents during the day. I had to laugh, recalling the teabagger protests last summer when Fox reporters were literally cheering on and pumping up the protesters. I also seem to recall that Hannity never makes those distinctions in declaring all media except Fox as inthetankforObama.


I think it is rich that the local radio is acting all shocked at such an accusation, that a news organization would carry water for a political party. Because I know what folks like Dunn would conclude if she listened to these stations around here. She would see very quickly that, while too insignificant nationally to be an arm of the GOP, WTMJ and WISN are at least pimples of the party.

The local stations, like Fox, pretend they have “news departments” apart from their talk shows. At WISN in the morning the straight news guy is Ken Herrera. True, many times Herrera will just deliver a straight news story, say the spillage of animal offal on the freeway.

But at other times you'll see him serving as the sort of Ed McMahon to talk-show-host Jay Weber. I remember Herrera, for example, gushing his enthusiasm for Sarah Palin, agreeing with an equally aroused Weber about how awesome she was going to be on the day Palin was announced as John McCain’s V.P. candidate a good year ago.

Even worse is another WISN fill-in Nick Reed, who does both straight news and fills in for other hosts. One afternoon Reed is going off forever against Doyle or Pelosi, blah, blah, blah. Then the next day he’ll be the guy reading a story at the top of the hour about state government.

Does anyone remember when, as part of their straight news, WISN would run a feature during their straight news called “good news from the front” that would try to sell the wars under George Bush with fluffy features about schools being built in Karbala, or an election, etc.? That feature stopped about when Bush’s term stopped. Hmmmm?


When it comes to their competitor WTMJ and its supposed journalism, it's hard to know where to start. What contaminates any claim that WTMJ can make that it engages in actual news is the damage wrought by the influence at that company wielded by show-host Charlie Sykes, who is an open GOP operative and MC of GOP fund-raisers.

Like the tick on a rat, Sykes is the carrier of GOP infection afflicting WTMJ’s news. The exposé by former WTMJ news and programming guy Dan Shelley documented how Sykes would rant and throw his weight around. Here's an excerpt of Shelley's article:

Another tense moment arose when the Harley-Davidson 100th anniversary was captivating the community – and our on-air coverage – in 2003, but Charlie
wanted to talk about school choice for seemingly the 100,000th time. He literally threw a fit, off the air and on, belittling other hosts, the news department and station management for devoting resources to Harley’s 100th coverage. “The Green House” newsman Phil Cianciola countered that afternoon with a joke about Charlie riding a Harley wearing loafers. Charlie complained to management about Phil and wouldn’t speak civilly about him in my presence again.

Cianciola was fired from WTMJ recently, by the way.

Although Shelley claimed in this article there is a sort of church-state barrier at the station between news and talk, I see a lot of leakage. Routinely, the news portion runs sound bites from folks who had been “interviewed” by Sykes.

But the problem is that Sykes does not interview. His questions lovingly caress the likes of Dick Cheney, Scott Walker, or Jim Sensenbrenner. While, if the interviewee is an enemy, Sykes uses questions to bludgeon them. For example, while interviewing then County Chair Karen Ordinans, Sykes attacked with interjections such as “I mean, hello??!!”

A print reporter would not run as a quote for an article about Taco Bell the line “think outside the bun” -- or quote "you're in good hands with All-State" while writing about insurance -- as if those quotes came from an interview with company executives. So why should WTMJ news re-run supposed interview bites that in fact were situated within the 3.5-hour commercial for the GOP that Sykes orchestrates every weekday?

So, no, I’m sorry, the White House is obviously correct here about even more than the Fox News they were talking about. And so they shouldn't back down.

Labels: Fox News, WISN-AM, WTMJ-AM

By Keith R. Schmitz

Here's a shock. Being German by heritage we are not known necessarily for our generosity.

But when it comes down to it, many of us are community-minded.

Here's a fresh example. A group of wealthy Germans is petitioning Chancellor Angela Merkel to increase taxes on those with personal fortunes of more than 500,000 euros ($750,000). The effort is an attempt to alleviate the budget crisis and target the money to social services.

As one member of the group put it:

The gap between the poor and the rich in Germany has widened during the last 15 years. One of the reasons for this were past governments' tax reduction policies that favored businesses and the rich.

When we keep hearing from the right that the money isn't there to do social programs or infrastructure programs, or whatever, the money is there.

We just have to go and get it.

Labels: Germany, income gap, taxation

By Keith R. Schmitz

For those in this country who are worried that the Chinese are not going to do anything about climate change and therefore we will become uncompetitive if we do, looks like the Chinese will be in fact going after the problem.

And for those of you in the peanut gallery who though you only believe the likes of sociopaths like Dick Cheney, Rush Limbaugh and John Bolton; and who will be skeptical, the proof is that the Chinese will be looking to make money off of their push.

That, for a country like ours that gives credence to nonsense such as creationism and intelligent design rather than legitimate science, plus in the virtue of exporting jobs overseas, that is the bad news.

Labels: Climate Change, green jobs, Science

by folkbum

Five and a half years ago, I got an email from some guy in Madison about becoming the blogger for the new alt-weekly newspaper he and his friend Jason Haas was starting up. I passed, but recommended an old college friend, Stacie Rosenzweig, for the gig, which she accepted.

Later today, Stacie and Jason are getting married. L'chaim!