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This Just In...
Kevin Fischer is an award-winning veteran broadcaster who has been seen and heard on Milwaukee TV and radio stations for nearly three decades.
Kevin, who is a legislative aide to state Sen. Mary Lazich (R-New Berlin), can be seen offering his views on the news on the public affairs program, “INTERchange,” on Milwaukee Public Television Channel 10. He lives with his wife, Jennifer, in Franklin.
June 2008 - Posts
By Kevin Fischer
Monday, Jun 30 2008, 07:45 PM
This is pretty slimy. Former General Wesley Clark, who ran for the Democrat Presidential nomination in 2004 is attacking John McCain’s military service. John McCain spent several years in a POW camp in Vietnam, so to criticize McCain’s service record is unconscionable.
From iht.com:
"He hasn't been there and ordered the bombs to fall" as a wartime commander, the general said on CBS. Clark is mentioned as a possible Obama running mate, although he originally supported Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton.
When the interviewer, Bob Schieffer, noted to Clark that McCain had been shot down over Hanoi, Clark replied, "I don't think riding in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to be president."
This is a huge tactical error on the part of the Obama campaign. Making derogatory remarks about McCain’s service to his country can and will create a backlash. Republicans in 2004, though critical of John Kerry, never cast any aspersions on the time he served in the military.
Obama, who has not been to Iraq, has had his foreign policy experience come into question. Having a surrogate throw rocks at a military war hero is bound to backfire.
Read the entire article on Clark.
Obama is now in damage control...
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By Kevin Fischer
Monday, Jun 30 2008, 06:22 PM
From jsonline.com:
“A 13th Milwaukee County supervisor today said he favors holding a November referendum on a 1-cent local sales tax increase.
Supervisor Theo Lipscomb said he would vote to override the expected veto of the referendum by County Executive Scott Walker. Adding Lipscomb's vote to the 12 supervisors who approved holding the sales tax referendum last week would provide the necessary veto override margin.”
This is a bad idea. Taxes are already too high in Milwaukee County. Another tax increase is unnecessary and Scott Walker is taking the appropriate action with a veto.
Walker’s veto needs to be upheld. Call your Milwaukee County Supervisor ASAP and ask that he/she vote to sustain the veto of the sales tax referendum.
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By Kevin Fischer
Monday, Jun 30 2008, 05:20 PM
The number of abortions performed in Wisconsin has dropped by 14% according to Wisconsin Right to Life. WRTL’s Executive Director Barbara Lyons puts that figure into perspective:
“1,313 babies who might have been killed by abortion are alive today.”
Here’s the WRTL news release.
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By Kevin Fischer
Monday, Jun 30 2008, 05:10 PM
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Last night on some of my blog entries, an individual used the name metromilwaukeetoday to leave comments that poked fun at former FranklinNOW blogger Greg Kowalski.
I found the comments very funny. However, it was clear the anonymous individual was not Kowalski and was using the title of Kowalski’s blog to imply he/she was Kowalski. Earlier today, I decided to remove those comments from my blog. I can’t allow someone to comment here pretending to be someone they’re not.
Mind you the few comments that were removed pale in comparison to the number of trashy comments about me that Greg Kowalski and other bloggers have allowed to be posted by anonymous writers on their sites. I have no doubt that’s going to continue because they feel they can do it, but hate it when the tables are turned.
Whoever metromilwaukeetoday was, he/she certainly made me and others laugh because he had Greg Kowalski nailed down pretty well. Metromilwaukeetoday did manage to get Greg and his band of hate all bent out of shape. The truth hurts, I guess.
I hope he/she will consider writing again using his/her real name with on-topic commentary.
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By Kevin Fischer
Monday, Jun 30 2008, 05:45 AM
Dinesh D' Souza, an immigrant from India who is now a U.S. citizen, is the Robert and Karen Rishwain Scholar at the Hoover Institution and author of the New York Times best-seller What’s So Great About America. A few years ago, he wrote a paper for the Heritage Foundation called What’s Great About America. For seven days, I'm posting, one each day, the qualities D'Souza listed in his paper. Here's #4
The Ethics of Work
Capitalism gives America a this-worldly focus in which death and the afterlife recede from everyday view. The gaze of the people is shifted from heavenly aspirations to earthly progress. As such, work and trade have always been important and respectable in America. This “lowering of the sights” convinces many critics that American capitalism is a base, degraded system and that the energies that drive it are crass and immoral.
Historically, most cultures have despised the merchant and the laborer, regarding the former as vile and corrupt and the latter as degraded and vulgar. This attitude persists today in the Third World, and it is even commonplace in Europe. Oscar Wilde spoke for many Europeans when he commented that to have to scrub floors and empty garbage cans is depressing enough; to take pride in such things is absolutely appalling.
These modern critiques draw on some very old prejudices. In the ancient world, labor was generally despised, and in some cases even ambition was seen as reprehensible. Think about the lines from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar: “The noble Brutus hath told you Caesar was ambitious.” And here you might expect Mark Antony to say, “And what’s wrong with that?” But he goes on: “If it were so, it was a grievous fault.”
In the cultures of antiquity, Western as well as non-Western, the merchant and the trader were viewed as low-life scum. The Greeks looked down on their merchants, and the Spartans tried to stamp out the profession altogether. “The gentleman understands what is noble,” Confucius writes in his Analects. “The small man understands what is profitable.” In the Indian caste system, the vaisya or trader occupies nearly the lowest rung of the ladder—one step up from the despised untouchable. The Muslim historian Ibn Khaldun argues that gain by conquest is preferable to gain by trade because conquest embodies the virtues of courage and manliness. In these traditions, the honorable life is devoted to philosophy or the priesthood or military valor. “Making a living” was considered a necessary but undignified pursuit. As Khaldun would have it, far better to rout your adversary, kill the men, enslave the women and children, and make off with a bunch of loot than to improve your lot by buying and selling stuff.
In America, it is different, and the American Founders are responsible for the change. Drawing on the inspiration of modern philosophers like John Locke and Adam Smith, the American Founders altered the moral hierarchy of the ancient world. They argued that trade based on consent and mutual gain was preferable to plunder. The Founders established a regime in which the self-interest of entrepreneurs and workers would be directed toward serving the wants and needs of others. In this view, the ordinary life, devoted to production, serving the customer, and supporting a family, is a noble and dignified endeavor. Hard work, once considered a curse, now becomes socially acceptable, even honorable. Commerce, formerly a degraded thing, becomes a virtue.
Of course, the Founders recognized that, in both the private and the public spheres, greedy and ambitious people might pose a danger to the well-being of others. Instead of trying to outlaw these passions, the Founders attempted a different approach. As James Madison put it in Federalist 51, “Ambition must be made to counteract ambition.” The argument is that in a free society, “the security for civil rights must be the same as that for religious rights. It consists in the one case in the multiplicity of interests, in the other in the multiplicity of sects.” The framers of the Constitution reasoned that by setting interests against each other, by making them compete, no single one could become strong enough to imperil the welfare of the whole.
In the public sphere, the Founders took special care to devise a system that would prevent, or at least minimize, the abuse of power. To this end, they established limited government in order that the power of the state would remain confined. They divided authority between the national and state governments. Within the national framework, they provided for separation of powers so that the legislature, executive, and judiciary would each have its own domain of power. They insisted upon checks and balances, to enhance accountability.
In general, the Founders adopted a “policy of supplying, by opposite and rival interests, the defect of better motives,” as Madison said. This is not to say that the Founders ignored the importance of virtue, but they knew that virtue is not always in abundant supply. The Greek philosophers held that virtue was the same thing as knowledge—that people do bad things because they are ignorant—but the American Founders did not agree. Their view was closer to that of St. Paul: “The good that I would, I do not. The evil that I would not, that I do.” According to Christianity, the problem of the bad person is that his will is corrupted, and this is a fault endemic to human nature. The American Founders knew they could not transform human nature, so they devised a system that would thwart the schemes of the wicked and channel the energies of flawed persons toward the public good.
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By Kevin Fischer
Sunday, Jun 29 2008, 08:23 PM
I'm back on Newstalk 1130 WISN this Thursday, July 3rd, filling in for Mark Belling from 3-6 pm.
I'll also be on WISN later in the month. More details later.
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By Kevin Fischer
Sunday, Jun 29 2008, 05:45 PM
Japan is getting fat.
Too fat.
The country wants to stop its tubby trend by enforcing a new law requiring that companies and local governments measure the waistlines of Japanese workers between the ages of 40 and 74 as part of their annual checkups. How many people have to face the tape measure? Try 56 million, about 44 percent of the entire Japanese population.
The standard is strict for Japanese men. They must not exceed a 33.5 inch waistline. For women, it’s 35.4 inches.
Anything larger and the overweight individual will be given dieting instructions if, after three months, no weight is lost.
There are sanctions in place as the government will fine companies and local governments that fail to meet particular goals.
With one out of three Americans officially obese, the question is, would such a program work here?
Given the way we eat, I’d say a rather loud and emphatic no.
Holy egg roll! This is a horrible idea for many reasons.
It’s government intrusion.
Why should a company be fined if its workers can’t lose weight?
How is that the company’s fault?
Obesity is clearly a matter of personal responsibility. It’s not the government’s or the private sector’s fault if your waistline is 40 inches. That’s YOUR fault and you should do something about it.
America needs incentives, and above all, greater willpower if it wants to shed some pounds.
Here’s the story from ABC News.
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By Kevin Fischer
Sunday, Jun 29 2008, 05:08 PM
A few months ago I wrote that liberals absolutely detest being called liberals.
Can’t stand it.
To them, it’s like spitting in their faces.
You are what you are, and yet the “L’ word sends liberals into orbit, thinking they’ve been insulted.
That’s why I read with glee the latest column from John Hawkins, professional blogger who runs Conservative Grapevine and Right Wing News.
Hawkins writes, “Conservatives genuinely believe that this is a center-right country. That's why conservatives have no qualms about being publicly labeled as conservatives and it's part of the reason why we're much more honest than the Left -- because we believe that a majority of the American people generally agree with us and share our values. So, those of us on the Right spend our time trying to explain to the American people what we really want to do, while the Left spends its time trying to hide what it really wants to do from the American people.”
Hawkins makes the outstanding point that liberals support programs and policies, not because of how effective they are, but based upon how they make the liberals feel. If they make the liberals feel all warm and snuggly inside, then no matter how expensive or ineffective the programs are, they get liberal approval.
Conservatives feel just the opposite. If a proposal is going to spend and waste large sums of money, conservatives will pan it. If a liberal can turn the cozy, fuzzy idea into a bumper sticker, count him in.
Most of the common sense world doesn’t operate the liberal way. Taxpayers aren’t about to back a program that will fail and costs an exorbitant amount of money. Liberals know this, so they are forced into lying about the wasteful spending agenda they support.
Hawkins writes, “Liberals have had to become habitually dishonest about what they believe and want to do to get their ideas put into action,” and as a result, can’t be trusted.
It’s a great column.
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By Kevin Fischer
Sunday, Jun 29 2008, 09:18 AM
Dining at the visually stunning Tchoup Chop Restaurant run by Emeril Lagasse at the Universal Royal Pacific Resort in Orlando a few years ago, my wife and I both marveled at the Asian fusion cuisine. In one entrée, Emeril took mouth watering Kalua pork and mingled it into an amazing chow mein that my wife, Jennifer did share a bite or two.
Back home, Jennifer and I watched Emeril Live on the Food Network as Emeril re-created the dish on television. Not one who’s intimidated by cooking, Jennifer happily agreed to tackle this dish for us in the Fischer kitchen.
Take a look at the recipe’s ingredients from the Food Network website:
2 teaspoons paprika
1 teaspoon cayenne
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
1/4 teaspoon black and white sesame seeds
Pinch ground 5-spice blend
Pinch ground nori (ground seaweed)
3/4 teaspoon Hawaiian salt
1 1/2 pounds pork shoulder roast (Boston butt or picnic roast), at room temperature
1 tablespoon oyster sauce
8 ounces fresh or dried Chinese egg noodles
3 tablespoons peanut oil
3 tablespoons chopped green onions
1 tablespoon minced ginger
2 teaspoons minced garlic
1/2 cup thinly sliced yellow onions
1/2 cup julienned bok choy
1/2 cup julienned carrots
2 tablespoons cornstarch
1/2 cup mung bean sprouts
1 cup chicken stock
The highlighted items were especially difficult to find, another common element on cooking shows. Those marquee chefs assume the average cook can easily get their hands on all these exotic ingredients. I don’t know where Emeril shops, but the truth is, Pick ‘n’ Save doesn’t carry ground seaweed.
The website claimed the recipe’s prep time was 10 minutes. Jennifer’s was 30 minutes.
While the final product was fantastic, it took several days to find all that was needed for the recipe. And it wasn’t cheap to prepare, costing close to $100.
It’s not just Emeril. It’s every chef on television.
Of course they make everything look effortless. They have an army of help wearing chef coats and aprons off-camera. Not often do the on-camera chefs spell out actual preparation time and the exact ingredients and amounts needed, and never do they discuss what it will actually cost to concoct, “Asian Spiced-Pan Roasted Moulard Duck Breast in a Chili Sapporo Beer Broth with Oyster Mushrooms and Udon Noodles.”
That’s on the broadcast end. Move over to the print side.
Sara Dickerman has written about food for the New York Times Magazine, Food and Wine, Bon Appetit, and Seattle magazine. In a recent piece on slate.com, Dickerman says there’s a problem with her kind, the hedonistic food press:
“Turn to the food section of your city paper and you'll learn where to spend $120 a pound on jamón ibérico or where to taste a flight of pricy olive oils,” Dickerman writes.
“As an industry, we rhapsodize about la cucina povera—that is, ‘poor food’ like polenta, beans, and braise-worthy cuts of meat like short-ribs and pigs trotters—but we rarely talk about cooking in terms of dollars and cents. When food writers and producers advocate economy, they're usually talking about time—churning out recipes for fast, easy, everyday weeknight meals that can be prepared in minutes. The dollar-savvy recipe is far less common. Why, even as the economic news turns grim, is it so unusual for the food media to take cost into account?”
Dickerman offers reasons in her slate.com piece, including the perception that cooks in the home are Emeril wanna-be’s, and the food press feels the obligation to push advertisers’ products.
She raises an interesting issue. Food inflation is the worst it’s been in decades. Would it hurt the food press to be even more informational by including an extra line or two about pricing?
The same holds true for TV chefs. Graham Kerr, the Galloping Gourmet’s longtime shtick was to, with bold ink, itemize the cost of meals he prepared.
I’m not suggesting Emeril or Wolfgang or anybody else dumb down their offerings to pedestrian, economic swill. But take the current state of affairs at the supermarket. Combine that with the great interest the public still has for making and eating fine food. Isn’t the cost an important piece of the story you’re trying to tell?
To read previous Culinary no-no’s, please click CULINARY NO-NO under my TAGS section.
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By Kevin Fischer
Sunday, Jun 29 2008, 07:55 AM
By Kevin Fischer
Sunday, Jun 29 2008, 06:00 AM
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Dinesh D' Souza, an immigrant from India who is now a U.S. citizen, is the Robert and Karen Rishwain Scholar at the Hoover Institution and author of the New York Times best-seller What’s So Great About America. A few years ago, he wrote a paper for the Heritage Foundation called What’s Great About America. For seven days, I'm posting, one each day, the qualities D'Souza listed in his paper. Here's #3
The Pursuit of Happiness
America offers more opportunity and social mobility than any other country. In much of the world, even today, if your father is a bricklayer, you become a bricklayer. Most societies offer limited opportunities for and little chance of true social mobility. Even in Europe, social mobility is relatively restricted. When you meet a rich person, chances are that person comes from a wealthy family. This is not to say that ordinary citizens cannot rise up and become successful in France and Germany, but such cases are atypical. Much more typical is the condescending attitude of the European “old rich” toward the self-made person, who is viewed as a bit of a vulgar interloper. In Europe, as in the rest of the world, the preferred path to wealth is through inheritance.
Not so in America. Success stories of people who have risen up from nothing are so common that they are unremarkable. Nobody bothers to notice that in the same family, one brother is a gas station attendant and the other is a vice president at Oracle. “Old money” carries no prestige in America—it is as likely to mean that a grandparent was a bootlegger or a robber baron. Rather, as the best-selling book The Millionaire Next Door documents, more than 80 percent of American millionaires are self-made.
Indeed, America is the only country that has created a population of “self-made tycoons.” More than 50 percent of the Americans on the Forbes 400 “rich list” got there through their own efforts. Only in America could Pierre Omidyar, whose parents are Iranian and who grew up in Paris, have started a company like eBay. Only in America could Vinod Khosla, the son of an Indian army officer, become a leading venture capitalist, a shaper of the technology industry, and a billionaire to boot.
The critics complain that equal opportunity is a myth in America, but there is more opportunity in this country than anywhere else in the world. European countries may have better mass transit systems and more comprehensive health care coverage, but nowhere does the ordinary citizen have a better chance to climb up the ladder and to achieve success than in the United States.
What this means is that in America, destiny is not given but created. Not long ago I asked myself, what would my life have been like if I had never come to the United States, if I had stayed in India? Materially, my life has improved, but not in a fundamental sense. I grew up in a middle-class family in Mumbai. My father was a chemical engineer; my mother, an office secretary. I was raised without great luxury, but neither did I lack for anything. My standard of living in America is higher, but it is not a radical difference. My life has changed far more dramatically in other ways.
If I had remained in India, I would probably have lived most of my life within a five-mile radius of where I was born. I would undoubtedly have married a woman of my identical religious, socioeconomic, and cultural background. I would almost certainly have become a medical doctor, an engineer, or a software programmer. I would have socialized within my ethnic community and had cordial relations but few friends outside this group. I would have had a whole set of opinions that could be predicted; indeed, they would not have been very different from what my father believed, or his father before him. In sum, my destiny would, to a large degree, have been given to me.
Let me illustrate with the example of my sister in India who got married several years ago. My parents began the process of planning my sister’s wedding by conducting a comprehensive survey of all the eligible families in our neighborhood. First, they examined primary criteria, such as religion, socioeconomic position, and educational background. Then my parents investigated subtler issues: the social reputation of the family, the character of the boy in question, rumors of a lunatic uncle, and so on. Finally, my parents were down to a dozen or so eligible families, and they were invited to our home for dinner with suspicious regularity. My sister was, in the words of Milton Friedman, “free to choose.” My sister knew about, and accepted, the arrangement: She is now happily married with two children. I am not quarreling with the outcome, but clearly, my sister’s destiny was, to a considerable extent, choreographed by my parents.
By coming to America, I have broken free from those traditional confines. I came to Arizona as an exchange student, but a year later, I was enrolled at Dartmouth College. There I fell in with a group of students who were actively involved in politics; soon I had switched my major from economics to English literature. My reading included books like Plutarch’s Moralia, The Federalist Papers, and Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited; they transported me to places a long way from home and implanted in my mind ideas that I had never previously considered. By the time I graduated, I had decided to become a writer, which is something you can do in America but which is not easy to do in India.
After graduating from Dartmouth, I became managing editor of a magazine and began writing freelance articles in newspapers. Someone in the Reagan Administration was apparently impressed with my work, because I was called in for an interview and hired as a senior domestic policy analyst. I found it strange to be working at the White House, because at the time I was not a United States citizen. I am sure that such a thing would not happen in India or anywhere else in the world. I also met my future wife during that time. She was born in Louisiana and grew up in San Diego; her ancestry is English, French, Scot–Irish, and German.
If there is a single phrase that encapsulates life in the Third World, it is that birth is destiny. I remember an incident years ago when my grandfather summoned my brother, my sister, and me and asked us if we knew how lucky we were. Was it because we were intelligent? Had lots of friends? Were blessed with a loving family? Each time, he shook his head and said, “No.” We pressed him: Why did he consider us so lucky? And finally he revealed his answer: “Because you are Brahmins.”
The Brahmin is the highest ranking in the Hindu caste system and is traditionally a member of the priestly class. Actually, my family has had nothing to do with the priesthood. Nor are we Hindu: My ancestors converted to Christianity many generations ago. Even so, my grandfather’s point was that before we converted, hundreds of years ago, our family used to be Brahmins. How he knew this remains a mystery, but he was insistent that nothing the three of us achieved in life could possibly mean more than our being Brahmins.
This may seem like an extreme example, only revealing my grandfather to be a very narrow fellow indeed, but the broader point is that traditional cultures attach a great deal of importance to data such as what tribe you come from, whether you are male or female, and whether you are the eldest son. Your fate and your happiness hinge on these things. If you are Bengali, you can count on other Bengalis to help you and on others to discriminate against you. If you are female, then certain forms of society and several professions are closed to you. And if you are the eldest son, you inherit the family house, and your siblings are expected to follow your direction. What this means is that once your tribe, caste, sex, and family position have been established at birth, your life takes a course that has been largely determined for you.
In America, by contrast, you get to write your own script. When American parents ask, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” the question is not merely rhetorical, for it is you who supplies the answer. The parents offer advice or try to influence your decision: “Have you considered law school?” “Why not become the first doctor in the family?” It would be very improper, however, for them to try to force their decision on you. Indeed, American parents typically send their children away to college, where they can live on their own and learn to be independent. This is part of the process of developing your mind, deciding your field of interest, and forming your identity. What to be, where to live, whom to love, whom to marry, what to believe, what religion to practice—these are decisions that Americans make for themselves.
In America, your destiny is not prescribed; it is constructed. Your life is like a blank sheet of paper, and you are the artist. The freedom to be the architect of your own destiny is the force behind America’s worldwide appeal. Young people, especially, find the prospect of authoring the narrative of their own lives irresistible. So the immigrant, too, soon discovers that America will permit him to break free of the constraints that had held him captive while offering the future as a landscape of his own choosing.
If there is a single phrase that captures this, it is the “pursuit of happiness.” Nobel laureate V. S. Naipaul analyses it in this way:
It is an elastic idea; it fits all men. It implies a certain kind of society, a certain kind of awakened spirit. So much is contained in it: the idea of the individual, responsibility, choice, the life of the intellect, the idea of vocation and perfectibility and achievement. It is an immense human idea. It cannot be reduced to a fixed system. It cannot generate fanaticism. But it is known to exist; and because of that, other, more rigid, systems in the end blow away.
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By Kevin Fischer
Saturday, Jun 28 2008, 10:20 PM
Why am I not surprised that no one, no one at the DMV in North Carolina realized that a license plate with the initials WTF wasn’t such a bright idea.
The DMV in NC actually used plates with those initials (need I explain?) in promotional announcements about a switch to different colored-letter plates.
There are so many jokes that come to mind.
How many state employees does it take to figure out…..blah, blah, blah.
Here in Wisconsin, our crack staff at the DMV wouldn’t let WTF slip by. They’ve come up with over 8,000 objectionable combinations for license plates including:
H8BUSH
NOSEX
DRUGZ
0HL0RD
Not sure I get why that last one is sooooo offensive.
These personalized license plates have created quite a buzz in many states, with motorists filing lawsuits because the DMV rejected their request for personalized license plates on the grounds the letter-number combinations are objectionable.
Personally, if someone wants to pay the extra few bucks to have GETOSAMA on their plates, I’m all for it.
GETOSAMA.
GETOSAMA.
Can you just imagine the lefties who read my blog going out of their minds right now.
YOU CAN’T HAVE THAT ON A LICENSE PLATE!
THAT’S MEAN!
THAT’S SO INSENSITIVE!
Yeh, so.
It’s just unfortunate that IMAGINE NO LIBERALS has too many letters for a personalized plate.
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By Kevin Fischer
Saturday, Jun 28 2008, 10:04 PM
Celebrity chef Emeril Lagasse a part of my next Culinary no-no?
Find out Sunday.
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By Kevin Fischer
Saturday, Jun 28 2008, 05:33 PM
I watched the video the other day of Chicago Mayor Richard Daley’s ridiculous reaction to the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that shot down Washington D.C.’s handgun ban.
The angry mayor scoffed, “"Why don't we do away with the court system and go back to the Old West? You have a gun, and I have a gun. We'll settle it on the streets."
Maybe he should start listening to his constituents who are sick and tired of crime.
"I need a handgun in my home," Chicago resident Colleen Lawson told ABC News. "It comes down to an issue of life or death."
We all know the bad guys have guns and they have access to guns. The high court ruled correctly this week that law-abiding citizens desiring protection should be allowed to have guns in their own homes. Washington’s handgun ban was ruled unconstitutional, so frustrated residents of Chicago, New York, Detroit, and Philadelphia, cities with similar bans are saying, what about us?
John Lott has written the definitive book on the issue of guns and their relationship to crime. Surveying data from every county in the United States from 1977-1994, Lott makes a strong case that shoots massive holes in the theories of gun control advocates: the more guns, the less crime. A criminal is less likely to strike if the belief is that the target may be armed. Read an interview with Lott, the author of, “More Guns, Less Crime.”
Here’s food for thought. From the Chattanoogan.com:
General Sessions Court Judge Bob Moon said Friday that crime in Chattanooga "has become so rampant that it is no longer possible for the police department to protect our citizens."
He told a woman who had been pulled from her car and beaten in the head that she or her mother needed to "purchase a weapon, obtain a gun permit and learn to protect yourself."
That’s a far cry from the position taken by Richard Daley and gun control advocates:
Hide under your bed and pray.
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By Kevin Fischer
Saturday, Jun 28 2008, 04:19 PM
As you know, taxes in Milwaukee County aren’t nearly as high as they should be.
They need to go up even more.
The Milwaukee County Board, the Milwaukee Journal/Sentinel Editorial Board and some lefty bloggers actually believe that’s true.
The Board voted 12-6 in favor of an advisory referendum to increase the county sales tax.
Here’s what they want. They want to raise the sales tax by one cent. That would be on top of the current 0.5% county sales tax. The county tax increase would also add to the state's 5% sales tax and the 0.1% stadium sales tax.
They want you, the beleaguered taxpayers to be able to go to the polls in November and say, sure, I don’t pay enough in taxes. Take some more out of my wallet. Here ya go!
Scott Walker, one of the few sane voices in the Courthouse, is going to veto the resolution calling for the referendum. That’s good news.
Then there will be a vote by the Board to try to override Walker’s veto.
The County Board needs to hear from you.
Call your Milwaukee County Supervisor next week.
Here are the 6 who voted against the referendum:
Mark Borkowski
Paul Cesarz
Joe Rice
Lynn DeBruin
Joe Sanfelippo
James "Luigi" Schmitt
If one of those six is your Supervisor, call to thank him/her for the no vote they cast and tell the Supervisor or the staff member that you want the Supervisor to sustain County Executive Walker’s veto of the sales tax referendum. It’s important that none of the six change their minds.
If your Supervisor voted for the referendum, kindly call and politely and respectfully tell the Supervisor or staff member that you oppose the referendum, you believe taxes are already too high in Milwaukee County, and you want the Supervisor to sustain Walker’s veto of the sales tax referendum.
If someone tries to argue or debate with you about the need for more money for the parks and transit for whatever reason, remind the staffer or Supervisor that you are already paying hefty taxes already for those services and Milwaukee County doesn’t need another tax increase.
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By Kevin Fischer
Saturday, Jun 28 2008, 03:58 PM
Last September, I blogged that we must admit, as a society, we truly despise smokers:A so-called “sin” tax, the cigarette tax is one that even those who hate tax increases can go along with if push comes to shove.
Why? Because people not only hate smoking, they hate smokers. A downtrodden lot in society, smokers have become pariahs, outcasts, a group to look down your noses at.
David Brooks, a columnist for the New York Times wrote that smokers are, “generally much poorer than average Americans and much less educated. High school dropouts smoke at roughly three times the rates of college graduates. They are also among the most demoralized people in society. Recent sociological research shows that most Americans regard smoking as a sign of low-class, unattractive behavior — and most smokers see it this way, too. Research by Kip Viscusi of Harvard suggests that smokers actually overestimate the dangers of their habit; they believe they are killing themselves even faster than they really are.”
Harvard’s Viscusi contends smokers actually save taxpayers money. They tend to die earlier than nonsmokers, they do not consume as much health care in old age or draw on Social Security as much as nonsmokers do. In 1997, the New England Journal of Medicine conducted a study that determined that total health care spending would go up, not down, if everyone stopped smoking.
Society doesn’t care. They’re just nasty, evil, dirty smokers. Stick it to ‘em. And boy, have we.
Since 1994, the average cigarette tax (state and federal combined) has tripled, rising from 50 cents to $1.46, an increase of more than 100 percent in real terms. Because smokers tend to die earlier than nonsmokers, they do not consume as much health care in old age or draw on Social Security as much as nonsmokers do. Leaving aside Social Security savings, a 1997 study in The New England Journal of Medicine concluded that total health care spending would go up, not down, if everyone stopped smoking.
Earlier this week, another blogger, Ryan Evans, who opposes a statewide smoking ban in Wisconsin, wrote a letter to the Journal/Sentinel on this very topic:
SMOKING
Hatred is allowed
Where is the outrage?
I don't get it. I am a nonsmoker but apparently am a rare minority among my peers. What I don't understand is why treating smokers as if they are less than human is acceptable.
Since getting involved in tobacco issues, I have never seen such irrational hatred and abuse as I have seen directed toward smokers. People aren't any better than they were 50 years ago; they just have directed their intolerance elsewhere.
The attitudes and words I have witnessed would never be tolerated if the word "smoker" were replaced with "black" or "woman" or "gay." If people made such utterances, they would be drummed out of town before they knew what hit them; yet when a smoker is the target, even ordinarily mild-mannered people turn into venomous monsters.
Where is this coming from? Are people to be so vilified for their personal choices? Aren't we all afforded the right to do our own thing? Yet smokers aren't even treated like human beings these days. It bothers me that discrimination, intolerance and hatred is still alive and well. It's simply redirected toward a target who people just don't like.
Ryan Evans
President, Ban the Ban Wisconsin
St. Croix Falls
Evans' letter got some response from people who more or less conceded their disgust (hate?) for smokers and rationalized their view in letters that appeared in today's Journal/Sentinel:
SMOKING
Tolerant no more
Concerning Ryan Evans' June 23 letter "Hatred is allowed" about smokers:
May I remind him how smokers have treated non-smokers for years? After lighting up, taking that first deep draw, then blowing it out into the vicinity of my nose, they would sometimes - no, rarely - state, not ask, "you don't mind if I smoke, do you?"
Evans stated that anti-smoker statements wouldn't be tolerated if the words "black, woman or gay" were substituted. Substitute the word "man," since I'm a female; I have no objection to any of these people standing next to me, as long as I'm not forced to take their smoke into my lungs.
If smokers choose to ruin their own health, that's their business. But don't you dare try to ruin mine! I don't look for confrontations, but I refuse to back down if challenged. I sat by quietly for almost 50 years breathing air polluted by the "habit." Now, I no longer have to. Yay for our side.
Joan Lapp
Franklin
Smoking is a choice
I would like to clear up why it is acceptable to express negative attitudes toward smokers but not toward racial groups, genders or sexual orientations. Smoking is not an uncontrollable birth characteristic, like race or gender. Choosing to smoke is a decision, and it's a stupid one. The health detriments of smoking have been known for generations, yet people continue to smoke.
Not only is smoking incredibly unhealthy for the smoker, but secondhand smoke makes the habit dangerous to those around them. A person's race or gender does not give people around them lung cancer.
In addition, cigarettes left unattended can cause disastrous fires, resulting in property damage and loss of life. A person's skin color or gender or sexual orientation cannot start fires.
Cigarette smokers are among the least considerate people I've encountered. At work, they feel entitled to take numerous breaks to get their "fix." My windshield has been hit countless times with cigarette butts flicked from speeding cars. Sidewalks, roadways and building entrances all are covered in the things. Throw a candy wrapper on the ground, and it's littering.
Smokers need to stop whining. If they need to get their "fix," they're welcome to put their face to my car's tailpipe and inhale. It's a lot more potent and gets the job done quicker.
James Lynch
Muskego
Nice.
So go ahead.
These two letter writers did.
Some of you know out there know it’s true.
It’s not just the smoke.
You hate smokers, too.
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By Kevin Fischer
Saturday, Jun 28 2008, 11:07 AM
Next Friday, July 4, 2008 will again be time to celebrate the independence of our wonderful country.
Sights, sounds and activities over this weekend will include:
Swimming, barbequing, and boating...
Wearing red white and blue, putting up extra flags around our properties, listening to patriotic music or watching patriotic specials on TV...
Watching Bartolotta’s set off their finest down at the lakefront… and in many cases trying to duplicate those colorful, gun-powder-and-mineral explosions in our own driveways.
How many people will take their dogs along to join in the festivities? After all, dogs like hamburgers and the lazy days of summer too! But have you stopped to consider that while your human companions are “oohing” and “ahhing” at the Big Bang....
Fido is less than happy about the rockets’ red glare and bombs bursting in air?
Whether you are partying at Lake Michigan, in one of our beautiful county parks, or in your own back yard, there are ways to help your canine companion cope with the sounds of celebration.
Please remember the sensitivity of your dog’s ears as you are celebrating our great country this July 4th. That way, EVERY member of your family can enjoy this spectacular holiday. -----Jennifer Fischer
Thanks, Jennifer. I used to work at WTMJ with a talented guy named John Baas. He could do serious news but he also had a flair for feature reporting. John did a piece about dogs and vacuum cleaners that was an absolute riot, how the animals go bonkers whenever the Hoover is turned on. Another reason not to get a dog, Jennifer. I could never clean the house! Time now for DOGS IN THE NEWS, canines that made headlines. Pets are becoming victims of the economy.One dog's journey from New Orleans, to Texas, and back to New Orleans...This dog and a governor's mansion just don't mix. Spoiled, spoiled dogs.
And finally, a hero in China comes to the rescue. We close the Barking Lot for another week with the sincere hope that you have taken Jennifer's message to heart and will seriously consider your dog's sensitivities this upcoming holiday. Remember, they're fragile, gentle, scared.....
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By Kevin Fischer
Saturday, Jun 28 2008, 08:18 AM
A look back at the people and events that made news the past week.
Week-ends is a regular weekly feature of This Just In...
HEROES OF THE WEEK
Wyatt Yocum
Once again, the Boy Scouts
Jay Thurston and Mike Kinziger
Resourceful Jessica Bruinsma
The 6 Milwaukee County Board members who voted against a proposed sales tax referendum
VILLAINS OF THE WEEK
Adam Peterson
The MATC Board
Cleveland teenagers
Animal abusers in Oshkosh
QUOTES OF THE WEEK
Barack Obama is "John Kerry with a tan."
Anti-tax activist Grover Norquist in an interview with the LA Times.
“She rocks, she rocks.”
Obama describing Hillary Clinton at a joint appearance in Unity, New Hampshire.
"This felt like when your mom forces you to go visit your Aunt Ida and she has to pinch your cheeks and you're sitting there in an uncomfortable suit and you can't wait to leave.”
A Clinton donor describing the mood on the campaign plane with Obama and Clinton.
“The Democratic Party of Wisconsin and its members have been embarrassed in the local and national media by the decision of Ms. Bartoshevich to endorse Senator McCain.”
From a letter to the Democratic National Committee from the state Democrat Party, asking that Debra Bartoshevich, an elected Hillary Clinton delegate for Racine County, be stripped of her delegate status over her support for John McCain. The party voted to endorse her expulsion as a delegate at the DPW convention in Stevens Point earlier this month.
“I still very much want to be a delegate for Hillary. I still support Hillary Clinton as the nominee. I hope to still go (to Denver). All I can do is sit and wait.”
Bartoshevich on her delegate status.
“Today’s incident only highlights the tough economic times many in our area face. After the flooding we have seen, in addition to high unemployment, energy, housing and food costs we cannot be surprised when thousands show up at 5 a.m. seeking assistance to feed their families.”
Wisconsin Congressman Gwen Moore, D-Milwaukee, in the aftermath of a crowd rushing a Milwaukee human services building Monday morning in search of disaster relief food vouchers.
“Monday’s incident shows that there needs to be regulations in place to verify that when a person applies to receive federal disaster benefits, in this case due to flooding, the applicant’s residence should actually have incurred flood damage.”
Wisconsin Congressman Jim Sensenbrenner, who has asked Milwaukee County DA John Chisholm to look into the incident and has introduced a bill intended to eliminate fraud in disaster-relief claims.
“I’m the gatekeeper.”
Convicted former Milwaukee Alderman Michael McGee on tape during his trial discussing the power he had over licensing.
“This is a test for the council. It has to respond. It can’t just simply say this never happened. It happened.”
Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett urging a study of best practices on city licensing.
OUTRAGE OF THE WEEK
Thousands turned out in the inner city earlier this week claiming to be flood victims in an attempt to gain food vouchers. Naturally, pushing and shoving broke out and police had to intervene.
One had to question how valid some of these claims were.
Charlie Sykes and others had observations.
MOST UNDER-REPORTED STORY OF THE WEEK
We have got to start placing the same amount of attention and scrutiny that we do on local and states taxes on our technical colleges.
This week, the Journal/Sentinel reported, "The Milwaukee Area Technical College Board on Tuesday night unanimously approved a 2009 budget that increases the property tax levy 4.9% — an increase that means the college has boosted the levy 31% in the last five years."
In a column last August announcing legislation to make unelected boards like the MATC Board elected, state Senator Mary Lazich wrote, "It appears from all the data, the increases being hoisted upon taxpayers are substantial. Consider the total tax levies for the state's 16 technical colleges. According to he non-partisan Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance, the technical college tax levies have increased from $251 million in 1992-'93 to $622 million in 2005-'06. That’s an increase of almost 150 percent compared to a 75 percent increase in overall levies during the same time period. Governor Doyle exempted technical colleges from levy limits in the 2005-07 state budget. Technical college boards were free to raise tax levies, and taxpayers were powerless."
Technical colleges are soaking us the most, and yet they continue to get a free pass.
MOST OVER-HYPED STORY OF THE WEEK
As wonderful as Summerfest is, let's not invent stories just to fill time on the 6 and 10:00 news.
STRANGEST, MOST UNUSUAL STORY OF THE WEEK
German man torches car.....read why.
Inmate falls through ceiling and winds up ?????
Something went wrong when she tried to make manure bombs.
Young man decides to disrupt graduation dressed as.......well.....take a look.
REMEMBER: Your suggestions/nominations for any of these categories every week are welcome, especially for HEROES OF THE WEEK. If you know of anyone in the community deserving of recognition, please e-mail me.
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By Kevin Fischer
Saturday, Jun 28 2008, 06:00 AM
Dinesh D' Souza, an immigrant from India who is now a U.S. citizen, is the Robert and Karen Rishwain Scholar at the Hoover Institution and author of the New York Times best-seller What’s So Great About America. A few years ago, he wrote a paper for the Heritage Foundation called What’s Great About America. For seven days, I'm posting, one each day, the qualities D'Souza listed in his paper. Here's #2:
Equality
Critics of America allege that the history of the United States is defined by a series of crimes—slavery, genocide—visited upon African–Americans and American Indians. Even today, they say, America is a racist society. The critics demand apologies for these historical offenses and seek financial reparations for minorities and African–Americans. But the truth is that America has gone further than any society in establishing equality of rights.
Let’s begin by asking whether the white man was guilty of genocide against the native Indians. As a matter of fact, he was not. As William McNeill documents in Plagues and Peoples, great numbers of Indians did perish as a result of their contact with whites, but, for the most part, they died by contracting diseases—smallpox, measles, malaria, tuberculosis—for which they had not developed immunities. This is tragedy on a grand scale, but it is not genocide, which implies an intention to wipe out an entire population. McNeill points out that, a few centuries earlier, Europeans themselves contracted lethal diseases, including the bubonic plague, from Mongol invaders from the Asian steppes. The Europeans didn’t have immunities, and the plague decimated one-third of the population of Europe, and yet, despite the magnitude of deaths and suffering, no one calls this genocide.
So what about slavery? No one will deny that America practiced slavery, but America was hardly unique in this respect. Indeed, slavery is a universal institution that in some form has existed in all cultures. In his study Slavery and Social Death, the West Indian sociologist Orlando Patterson writes, “Slavery has existed from the dawn of human history, in the most primitive of human societies and in the most civilized. There is no region on earth that has not at some time harbored the institution.” The Sumerians and Babylonians practiced slavery, as did the ancient Egyptians. The Chinese, the Indians, and the Arabs all had slaves. Slavery was widespread in sub-Saharan Africa, and American Indians had slaves long before Columbus came to the New World.
What is distinctively Western is not slavery but the movement to end slavery. Abolition is a uniquely Western institution. The historian J. M. Roberts writes, “No civilization once dependent on slavery has ever been able to eradicate it, except the Western.” Of course, slaves in every society don’t want to be slaves. The history of slavery is full of incidents of runaways, slave revolts, and so on. But typically, slaves were captured in warfare, and if they got away, they were perfectly happy to take other people as slaves.
Never in the history of the world, outside of the West, has a group of people eligible to be slave owners mobilized against slavery. This distinctive Western attitude is reflected by Abraham Lincoln: “As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master.” Lincoln doesn’t want to be a slave—that’s not surprising. But he doesn’t want to be a master either. He and many other people were willing to expend considerable treasure, and ultimately blood, to get rid of slavery not for themselves but for other people. The campaign to end slavery was much harder in the United States than in Europe for the simple reason that the practice of slavery had become so entrenched in the American South.
The uniqueness of Western abolition is confirmed by the little-known fact that African chiefs, who profited from the slave trade, sent delegations to the West to protest the abolition of slavery. And it is important to realize that the slaves were not in a position to secure their own freedom. The descendants of African slaves owe their freedom to the exertions of white strangers, not to the people in Africa who betrayed and sold them.
Surely, all of this is relevant to the reparations debate. A trenchant observation on the matter was offered years ago by Muhammad Ali shortly after his defeat of George Foreman for the heavyweight title. The fight was held in the African nation of Zaire. Upon returning to the United States, a reporter asked Ali, “Champ, what did you think of Africa?” Ali replied, “Thank God my grand-daddy got on that boat!” There is a mischievous pungency to Ali’s remark, but behind it is an important truth. Ali is saying that although slavery was oppressive for the people who lived under it, their descendants are in many ways better off today. The reason is that slavery proved to be the transmission belt that brought Africans into the orbit of Western prosperity and freedom. Blacks in America have a higher standard of living and more freedom than any comparable group of blacks on the continent of Africa.
But what about racism? Racism continues to exist in America, but it exists in a very different way than it did in the past. Previously, racism was comprehensive or systematic; now it is more episodic. In a recent debate with the Reverend Jesse Jackson at Stanford University, I asked him to show me how racism today is potent enough to prevent his children or mine from achieving the American dream. “Where is that kind of racism?” I said. “Show it to me.” Jackson fired off a few of his famous rhyming sequences—“I may be well-dressed, but I’m still oppressed,” and so on—but conceded that he could not meet my challenge. He noted that just because there was no evidence of systematic racism, he could not conclude that it did not exist. Rather, he insisted, racism has gone underground; it is no longer overt but covert, and it conti
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