Brad at Letters in Bottles was liveblogging Ray Allen’s “victory party” / concession speech:
“People in this town are not talking about trolleys…” – great line
Ironically, the one person who talked about trolleys, repeatedly, all the time, was Ray Allen, whose whole campaign was purposed around the idea that Mayor Dave is crazy to study the [...]

I’m agnostic on the merits of inclusionary zoning. It offers the promise of maintaining the economic and civic health of an urban area. It also gets lost in the weeds of cumbersome bureaucratic decision-making. It creates a whole lot of misaligned incentives for a lot of different groups of people, and that orthogonality makes good [...]

Nice:
The 2007 Fighting Illini season ticket includes six games at Memorial Stadium, with Michigan and Wisconsin being tabbed as premium games. Sideline season tickets will be $214. [...]
Sideline tickets remain at $42 for most games this season. Premium game sideline single-game tickets are $50 each. For Michigan and Wisconsin, horseshoe single-game tickets will be priced [...]

The repeated ethical problems and charges of professional misconduct plaguing Annette Ziegler’s campaign for the Supreme Court might be gaining some traction:
State Supreme Court candidate Annette Ziegler ruled as a Washington County judge on dozens of cases brought by a bank that her husband helps run.
Despite judicial rules that say judges must step aside in [...]

Apple Store goodness is coming to town. Yay.

It’s so much fun to watch local conservatives do their best to disassociate themselves from their political party and from the wages of conservative governance. Mayor Dave calls Ray Allen a Republican, and Allen complains that mentioning party affiliation is a low blow. Mayor Dave writes:
[W]e’ve run a positive campaign, highlighting our good record [...]

Austin King’s idea for public financing of local elections is a good one.
Details of the plan would be left to the study committee, but King said he envisions the plan offering as much as $5,000 to each aldermanic candidate and up to $100,000 per mayoral candidate.
Candidates would get the cash if they agree to abide [...]

Having somewhat stupidly braved the weather last night, I can say that the Madison Theatre Guild’s performance of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Abridged, is very good. The last show is tonight at the (enjoyably low-key) Bartell Theatre. Highly recommended.

I was generally happy with the results Tuesday, but what the hell happened to Linda Clifford’s campaign?
It’s not just the money thing (since when have we not be outspent by Republicans?), although that was part of it. The libertarian, anti-tax group Grover Norquist’s Club for Growth, and other conservative interest groups spent heavily on the [...]

Seen at West Towne Mall:
“JC Penney is a proud sponsor of the 79th Annual Academy Awards for six years running.”

War, even when it’s necessary, is almost always a lose-lose proposition. So it’s good to see articles like the one in today’s Capital Times highlighting the staggeringly large opportunity cost of the war in Iraq, as calculated by two County Board supervisors:
Hulsey and Vedder calculated what those war dollars could have purchased in Dane County, [...]

From the Isthmus:
Lake Monona appears to be frozen at long last. Though its broad expanses of ice remain dotted with a few areas of open water, Lyle Anderson, manager of the Wisconsin State Climatology Office, yesterday was making the tentative judgement identifying Thursday, Jan. 18 as this year’s official freeze date for Monona. If [...]

I have a few thoughts on the Dane County Democratic Party meeting last week, and on the grassroots rejection of some of the party leadership’s endorsements. Russell Wallace summarizes the goings-on thus:
Two unopposed Madison Common Council members, Zach Brandon and Lauren Cnare, both of whom are quite conservative by Madison standards, were denied endorsements despite [...]

We need to upgrade Dane County’s electrical grid, and ATC has been doing just that (for some reason, our power is provided by one company, and the transmission lines are owned by a second company). Some bigger proposals are now on the table, and some people are upset about this. I think the critics are [...]

The Wisconsin State Journal reports on some initial public discussions about potential street car routes in the city:
“It’s a very people- (and) pedestrian-oriented transportation option,” Trowbridge said, adding that streetcars would provide an opportunity to get around Downtown without using a car.
The study committee will present route options considered to have high, medium and low [...]