Good Morning America broadcast a story the other day about how poor emergency services are getting around the U.S. They highlighted a dying student who waited almost an hour for an ambulance to arrive (although they concede he probably would have died anyway, due to a heart condition). Suburban areas are blaming high population growth for poorer emergency services.

While this may be news to white people, didn’t Flavor Flav have this covered about 15 years ago?

A trip to Madison’s “Brat Fest” this weekend called to mind Wisconsin’s great tradition of festivals. The great people are the best reason to live in Wisconsin, but festivals seem to bring out some real beauties. All summer, underdressed people will gather across this state, soak in nuclear levels of sun rays, and declare war on their arteries by consuming enough fat calories to power a Monte Carlo. Many attendees have blood alcohol levels that rival their ACT scores.

Every summer, I look out at these crowds and wonder if the mass of people in attendance is representative of actual people living in Wisconsin, or merely representative of people who attend festivals.

It’s not as though there is any great surprise awaiting individuals at these events – every alcohol-soaked event morphs into another over a short period of time. If you can’t make it to Summerfest this year, close your eyes and think about what it was like last year – because it will be exactly the same.

For many people (i.e. people with jobs), the alcohol soaked crowds at Wisconsin festivals come as somewhat of a shock. As one surveys the throngs of leathery skinned Rubenesque beauties who adhere to a strict regimen of skin care by Marlboro, one has to wonder how far people are willing to go to make their lives more difficult. Generally, wouldn’t a person’s inclinations lean toward making their life easier? Why do people behave in such destructive ways?

It’s almost as if these people are in some sort of competition to voluntarily make their lives as challenging and difficult as possible. Call it “The Self-Inflicted Olympics.” In this competition, scoring is as follows:

Have children with someone you’re not married to – 4 points for the first child, 6 for each subsequent child.

Don’t graduate from high school – 4 points.

Have so many children you qualify as your own school district – 20 points.

Obtain a tattoo, piercing, or hairstyle that makes you virtually unemployable, except at a tattoo or piercing parlor – 3 points

Wear clothing that shows off your dragon tattoo, no matter what part of your body it inhabits or how old you get – 3 points

Wear any combination of jean shorts, sandals with socks, or any Dale Jr. paraphernalia to a job interview – 2 points

Smoke – 3 points

Get so fat that you think you deserve credit for dieting 4 hours per day: 4 points

Ignore every piece of publicly funded anti-drug propaganda you have been bombarded with your entire life and decide that cocaine or heroin looks like a good lifestyle choice: 6 points

Routinely drink so much that you think you have a shot with the Hooter’s waitress: 3 points

Cheat on your spouse: 4 points

Cheat on your spouse with someone ugly: 6 points

I propose literature to be distributed in schools that lay out these options for those young minds that are intent on ruining their lives forever. If you gather more than 6 points, there is a 95% chance that your future home will have a license plate, and you will live in constant fear of burning your baby daddy’s next pork chop. It has been scientifically tested – trust me.

The most appalling aspect of all these categories is that it costs absolutely nothing to adhere to them, yet people around the nation are intent on ignoring them.

These are our Wisconsin friends, for better or for worse. Build a funnel cake stand and have a flat keg of Old Style on hand, and they will come. May God bless them all.

I will cover more about the sham campaign finance reform interest groups in a later column, but today’s article in the MJS (“Ad rips budget’s benefit for gays”) really deserves mentioning.

Note the section about Mike McCabe, Executive Director of the “nonpartisan” Wisconsin Democracy Campaign:

Mike McCabe, executive director of the non-partisan Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, decried the ads. McCabe’s group monitors issue ads.

“The public should be suspicious and skeptical when they’re bombarded with ads from groups with motherhood-and-apple-pie-sounding names telling them what they should think about the state budget,” he said.

This is perfectly consistent with McCabe’s view that only he and the sycophantic pro-campaign finance reform editorial boards should be able to express their views on issues. Let’s look at the “Wisconsin Democracy Campaign,” which is supposedly above pure politics:

Mom and Apple Pie Name: Check

TV Ads Influencing Public Opinion: Check (The WDC announced their own issue ads in January of 2005, although there’s a better chance of you seeing a yeti at Starbucks than one of these ads on TV.)

Shady Political Angle: Check (see previous post about McCabe’s failed campaign for State Assembly as a Democrat).

Citizens that collectivize, pool resources, and express a point of view deserve the right of free speech, regardless of whether they agree with the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign.

UW System chancellors have made very good livings shilling for more funding for the system. Their daily routine is essentially this: fundraise, cry to the Legislature, get their Lexuses washed, repeat.

In making their pitch to the Legislature, they often paint a picture of UW campuses as bustling communities of learning, where fresh faced students try to quench their insatiable thirst for knowledge by spending hours studying biochemistry and philosophy. In their spare time, this diverse group of students is likely volunteering at hospitals for puppies and searching for the meaning of universal justice.

Such a picture of life at the UW raises one question: Have the administrators actually ever met a UW student?

Generally, “diversity” at the UW means one thing – it is a place where people who like to smoke pot, drink heavily, gamble excessively, and hook up with co-eds below their standards can all live together in harmony. For most co-eds, the only “searching” that takes place is searching for their pants when they wake up and don’t know where they are. The UW is a place where sleeping until noon is actually a dating strategy – so you have an excuse to ask the hot girl in class to borrow her notes. It is a place where you can string along your college experience for years and years, to allow for more time for sitting in coffehouses, stroking your goatee and reading Kurt Vonnegut. It is a place where you can make a political statement based on what body part you do or don’t decide to shave.

I believe noted intellectual “Jonah” said it best when Playboy named UW-Madison as the 7th best party school in the U.S. He said:

“There’s a bar in this town to suit every taste. There are building parties every weekend. Wander around until you find something, then walk in and grab a cup. Everyone is open, friendly and drunk. It’s not a small group that parties a lot, it’s an entire town that parties all the time.” –Jonah

The UW System has done one thing brilliantly – tell everyone how great it is. Without question, it is a top-tier public education system. But is it really the best in the nation? Should taxpayers pay the bill so the UW can attain some subjective, amorphous concept of what “the best” is? Does anyone believe that one gets a better education at the UW Madison merely by stepping on campus? Doesn’t the student’s effort and desire to learn play a more significant role in the quality of their education? Most importantly, why does the evil robot in Star Wars III cough – does he have robot chest congestion?

In the most recent U.S. News and World Report, UW-Madison ranked as the 32nd best undergraduate university in the nation. When one looks at the methodology of the rankings, they have little to do with student performance. 75% of a school’s score are tied up in peer grading (essentially asking professors who is most prestigious), student retention (how many return for their second year), faculty salaries (the average full professor at Madison makes $96,200 per year), and financial resources (amount spent per student).

Cuts to the UW System have little to do with student performance. In fact, only 26% of the nearly $4 billion biennial UW budget goes to actual instruction of students. 20% goes to research. The rest goes to administration, building costs, hospitals, food service, etc. Last budget, the Legislature cut the UW by $250 million, and students likely can’t even tell the difference. Despite increases of 18% in tuition per year the last two years, UW-Madison is currently second to last in the Big Ten in resident undergraduate tuition, so students continue to get good value for their dollar.

When all funds are added up, the UW System has averaged a 5.5% increase per year since 1994-95, well above the rate of inflation. During that time, the number of students has increased .68%. So the UW is getting more money to educate virtually the same number of students. In fact, the state still invests almost $1 billion per year of general purpose tax revenue in the UW System, making it the third largest single program the state funds, behind K-12 education and Medical Assistance. 52% of all state full time employees funded with general tax revenue are UW employees (there are 18,327 total of these FTE UW employees funded with general revenue).

UW adminstrators are in a tough position. They have to fight against “devastating” budget cuts, but when those cuts come, they can’t ever admit that those cuts had a deleterious effect on education at the UW. That isn’t consistent with the “We can beat up any other public university system” message they have been touting for years.

Many of the facts that they use to show the lack of respect that they have been getting from the state are misleading. They often cite the fact that the UW System has been dropping as a percentage of state general purpose expenditures. While proportionally this is true, the UW has continued to receive adequate increases year after year. They are only dropping proportionally because the state has upped spending to other programs, most notably K-12 education, by a much higher percentage. Thus, you can increase aid to the UW by a healthy percentage, but if you increase aid to a larger program by a greater amount, the UW will appear to be losing ground, when that isn’t the case.

They also make the case that state aid is declining as a percentage of the UW budget. This is misleading for the same reason as above – other revenues to the UW System have been increasing at a much higher rate. Tuition has increased by an average of 8% per year for the last 20 years, federal gifts and grants are up, and sales of UW merchandise are all up. Thus, state aid makes up a smaller piece of the pie.

In the end, the UW’s pleas for more state funding are about as convincing as the Tom Cruise – Katie Holmes romance. In the wild, this would be known as the biennial “Dance of the Chancellors,” where UW administrators flood the State Capitol, crying poverty (and no doubt collecting a healthy per diem to make the trip).

Hurricanes are devastating. Tsunamis are devastating. Professors at UW Madison actually teaching 35% of the hours taught on campus, rather than the 31% they currently teach? Not devastating.

Okay, I fully expected the Cap Times to write a slanted, misguided editorial on the minimum wage deal struck by Governor Doyle and the Legislature.

But notice the photo they choose to use to represent the “typical” minimum wage earner. This young lady, most likely working her way through school to earn a better living (as almost all college students do) is wearing an Abercrombie and Fitch sweatshirt. A visit to the A&F website confirms that similar sweatshirts sell for $59.50.

Needless to say, there will be no telethon for this young woman.

I once saw an episode of “COPS” where a woman approached one of the officers to complain that her neighbor had not yet paid her the $20 she owed her for a bag of “weed” that had exchanged hands.

This is the first image I recalled last November when State Senator Mary Lazich spoke with Citizens for Responsible Government and told them that she had voted for State Senator Scott Fitzgerald for the position of Senate majority leader via secret ballot. CRG is known for their ability to mobilize in the Southeast portion of the state and erase the political careers of politicians with whom they disagree, or who they distrust.

The problem is, Lazich did not vote for Scott Fitzgerald (widely seen as the pro-Taxpayers’ Bill of Rights, or TABOR) candidate, as the pro-TABOR CRG found out through its own informal poll. What followed was a ridiculously clumsy appearance by Lazich on WTMJ Radio’s Jeff Wagner show, on which Lazich said her statement was “a lie on my part.” Apparently, Lazich thought it wise to deceive the one group that could remove her from office for deceiving them.

CRG naturally began ridiculing Lazich, including suspiciouly prurient photos of her with an expanding nose, and her milking a cow (if cows don’t have horns, we really have a story). Talk immediately circled about the possibility of a recall for Lazich, although by state law she was not eligible for recall for a full year, since she had just been re-elected. Lazich resigned the Assistant Majority Leader post she had negotiated with new majority leader Dale Schultz in exchange for her leadership vote, but remained on the prestigious Joint Finance Committee.

Lazich was no stranger to controversy before the majority leader vote debacle. In 2004, she told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that she “flatly refused” to support the Taxpayers Bill of Rights. Lazich reasoned through some tortured logic that TABOR was actually too generous for local school districts, and that the teachers’ union should be 100% in favor of the constitutional amendment to cap taxes and spending. This is like telling parents they should be voluntarily in favor of sending their kids to sleepovers at the Neverland Ranch.

After harsh criticism from the conservative base, including local talk show hosts, Lazich immediately switched positions. Within a week, she issued a press release blasting then-majority leader Mary Panzer for her failure to bring TABOR to a vote.

When her vote against Fitzgerald for majority leader was made public, Lazich immediately tried to placate conservatives by calling for TABOR to be brought up in the first month of 2005. Six months later, the chances of TABOR being brought to the floor are roughly the same as the chances that Lindsay Lohan will return one of my four daily calls.

Lazich then inflamed her relationship with CRG further, when she took credit for inviting a TABOR expert from Colorado to speak to the Senate Republican Caucus. As it turns out, Lazich’s involvement in the visit was limited to the fact that she knew that “Colorado” was a state. CRG immediately pounced, nailing Lazich with another lie that will surely end up on a piece of literature in early 2006.

In the subsequent months, Lazich has attempted to further reach out to conservatives by positioning herself as a budget hawk, calling for deep cuts in state spending to balance the budget. In her strained effort to move to the right, she recently engaged in an embarassing exhange of letters with Department of Administration Secretary Marc Marotta, (who apparently has too much time on his hands these days) criticizing the Doyle administration for overspending. Needless to say, the media were underwhelmed by Lazich’s endless letters, nary a word was reported statewide, and Marotta was able to refocus his efforts on sending letters to Model Airplane News.

Lazich has also climbed on the bandwagon of some red-meat conservative issues such as photo ID for voting and allowing people to carry concealed weapons. Rumor has it she will soon be taking credit for Pat Tillman, the sports bra, and frozen custard.

Not content to only enrage conservatives, Lazich slipped up during a Legislative Fiscal Bureau budget briefing when she referred to nursing home residents as “coffin bound.” While she reportedly was trying to make the case that nursing homes are necessary and provide services to those who need them the most, she provided a catch phrase that has managed to find its way into every Democratic press release in the last 3 months.

Rumor has it that people are lining up to run against Lazich in a January 2006 recall election. Her district contains three excellent, highly qualified Republican Assembly members, who all have substantial campaign machines in place. Scott Gunderson would likely jump at the opportunity to beat Lazich, who beat him in a 1998 special election primary to fill Lynn Adelman’s old seat (Think “Count of Monte Cristo” in Muskego).

What has happened to Mary Lazich is an important lesson to legislators who put personal ambition before serving their constituents. There’s nothing better than a legislator that doesn’t need the job. Regardless of party affiliation, the public can sniff out desperation in a elected official like a bloodhound. When clinging to office takes precedence over sound philosophy and public service, something has got to give.