Archive for the 'Wisconsin News' Category

Wisconsin supreme court blogging

Monday, April 7th, 2008

I woke up this morning to an NPR discussion on the virtues of getting rid of supreme court elections, and having the justices appointed by the governor, instead.
The argument seems to be that the campaign run by Mike Gableman and his third-party surrogates spent too much money, was too negative, and was largely based on […]

The frozen tundra

Tuesday, March 11th, 2008

The Cap Times wonders if global warming will affect the Packers. Given their performance in the NFC championship game, it couldn’t hurt.

Spring training

Thursday, February 28th, 2008

Today is the beginning of secular Advent: the first day of spring training.

Fun with numbers: Obama wins every single ward in Dane County

Wednesday, February 20th, 2008

Barack Obama won Wisconsin 58% to 41%, but it’s more fun to look at the local results. He won Dane County 67% to 31%, and he won the city of Madison 71% to 28%.
There are 188 wards reporting in Dane County (*). Barack Obama won all 188 of them.
My own ward 99 is […]

Super Bowl trivia, Wisconsin edition

Saturday, February 2nd, 2008

Via the Thoughtful Conservative, it’s the Wisconsin version of Super Bowl trivia (no cheating!):
Which team won Super Bowl I?
Which team had the MVP in Super Bowl I?
Which team won Super Bowl II?
Which team had the MVP in Super Bowl II?
Which team won Super Bowl XXXI?
Which team had the MVP in Super Bowl XXXI?

We’re going to beat your Giants anyways, Rudy

Tuesday, January 15th, 2008

Heh. And you’ve gotta love the commenter who quips, “You know Mitt would sign anything! He’d even write ‘Go Yankees!’ on a Red Sox Jersey if you asked him to.”

Tales from the DMV: wow, is that a horribly designed driver license or what?

Monday, January 14th, 2008

I got to spend my lunch hour at the DMV today, renewing my driver license. It was news to me, but apparently the state rolled out a new driver license a couple years ago. It’s now almost certain that we have the ugliest and worst-designed driver license in the United States.
The good changes:

The font of […]

Wisconsin supreme court blogging

Monday, December 3rd, 2007

After a campaign season full of headlines like “Ziegler faces conflict questions: Husband on bank board; she made rulings anyway”, and after hearing Annette Ziegler argue that, despite state laws to the contrary, she can use her own private “gut check” to determine if there are any conflicts of interest, and after she was censured […]

Short-sighted transportation planning from the Leader-Telegram

Monday, November 5th, 2007

Via WisOpinion: Don Huebscher, editor of Eau Claire’s Leader-Telegram, thinks trains are a waste of money:
An amendment was offered as part of the Amtrak budget vote that would have capped taxpayer subsidies at $200 per passenger next year, and reducing that cap by $25 per passenger in each following year. The amendment failed by a […]

Three cheers for Chris Dodd

Friday, October 19th, 2007

Good for Senator Dodd:
Connecticut Democratic Senator Christopher Dodd has vowed to put a hold on a Senate bill that reportedly would grant retroactive legal protection to any phone or internet company that helped with the president’s secret, warrantless wiretapping program, Dodd announced via email and on his presidential campaign website Thursday.
The larger problem, of course, […]

Yosted

Wednesday, September 26th, 2007

For the most part, I think Ned Yost’s been doing a good job. He’s not the Manager of the Year, but I’m certainly not on the Fire Ned Yost bandwagon. He’s adequate, and there aren’t any potential candidates out there who would be obviously better.
Over the course of a season, any number of decisions will […]

Budget failure no longer a bipartisan problem

Tuesday, September 25th, 2007

Once upon a time, the two houses of the state legislature were governed by different parties. One party wanted to create a large, new program to guarantee universal health care for everyone in Wisconsin, and raise the taxes necessary to pay for it. They came up with an ambitious but politically unlikely plan. The other […]

One more “liberal abuse blog” takes the troll bait

Tuesday, September 11th, 2007

Via Folkbum, I see that Jessica McBride has been nice enough to give us a perfect reminder of why I, like so many of my countrymen, have spent the last six years becoming increasingly contemptuous of conservatism and the Republican Party.
This is the sort of thing that should be copied down and preserved, so […]

Actually, Texas could learn from Wisconsin

Thursday, August 30th, 2007

In my previous post, I got snarky about a grumpy article asserting that “Wisconsin could learn from Texas”, mostly by reorienting state and local governments around the goal of making things easier for business.
It’s a stupid article, and not worth spending much time on, but anyways:
All things being equal, we should try to make Wisconsin’s […]

Wisconsin’s business environment

Thursday, August 30th, 2007

Via WisOpinion: when reading opinion pieces on how awful (*) it is to do business in Wisconsin, I tend to discount arguments that start like this:
So, I bought this little Oil & Gas company in Texas this month, several million in revenue added to the bottom line and 11 new employees, nothing major.
I downplay […]