Madison – Following the lead of the NBA’s Milwaukee Bucks, Governor Jim Doyle today announced some “sassy” steps to improve his administration’s sagging reputation. “I think the Bucks have shown that new uniforms can make all the difference, regardless of whether it’s the same people wearing them,” said an effusive Doyle.

A popular promotion within the Doyle administration has been “Turn Back the Clock Night,” where Doyle donors are offered the chance to re-bid for state contracts that were previously awarded to competent low bidders. For complete authenticity, Doyle’s donors are then allowed to pay the state what the contract was worth in 1983.

Doyle said the new color scheme and logo are an attempt to freshen the administration’s image and make it more appealing to younger voters. “I want to reach down to the hip younger kids that might care more about Sir Mix-a-Lot and Rubik’s cubes than they do about their government, who they think might be out of touch,” said Doyle.

In a related move, the Doyle administration obtained point guard Earl Boykins from the Denver Nuggets in exchange for the state welding contract. ESPN analyst Jay Bilas immediately ripped the move, citing welding’s tremendous upside potential and wingspan.

The administration’s official uniform has changed several times, with the most recent being the fashionable orange jumpsuit.

Some of you might remember this post from a few weeks back, where I poked fun at local news anchor Christa Dubill. I admit, I was a little nervous after posting it, since I really didn’t know anything about her – I just really picked her completely at random.

A few days back, I got an e-mail from Christa, and she totally played along with the joke. And she clearly has a superior sense of humor. So I urge both my readers to scrap those other crappy Madison stations and watch Channel 27 news exclusively. They’re the only ones that do any real investigative reporting anyway.

So cheers to Christa, the queen of Madison news.

Long time readers of mine know that I am particularly fond of ridiculing the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, the dopey left wing group that lobbies full time to restrict your free speech rights. The whole organization is led by Mike McCabe, a failed former State Assembly candidate who decided that the whole system is corrupt after he got his head handed to him in a Democratic primary for Tammy Baldwin’s old seat.

The whole purpose of the WDC is to go after special interests that have undue influence over the Legislative process. Specifically, they criticize groups that don’t disclose their contributors, yet attempt to influence policy. The media fall all over themselves to get quotes from McCabe in every article, despite the fact that his only real specialty is getting himself quoted in news stories. It’s like the State Journal needs his permission before they go to print. It’s just a matter of time before we see:

MOVIE REVIEW: McCabe gives “White Chicks” two gut-busting thumbs’ ups!

While McCabe identifies his groups as being “nonpartisan,” that notion is laughable. One needs to look no further than its board of directors to see it is composed of every lefty spending group in the state, including many groups that engage in the very political activities that WDC denounces. Whenever he criticizes “pay to play” activities, it’s always a criticism of a tax credit that helps business and economic development, but never any legislation that helps the Sierra Club or Coalition for Aging or any of his special interest buddies.

The “nonpartisan” charade was shattered forever when they released this little-read release last week, in which they denounce the constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage.

You may wonder to yourself – just what business does a group supposedly dedicated to campaign finance reform have putting out a release on gay marriage? There are several possibilities:

1. McCabe just couldn’t help himself any longer. He knows he has the media in his pocket, and thought they would jump when he issued a release on an issue that his organization doesn’t have any relationship to.

2. Action Wisconsin, or some other gay rights group, called McCabe to enlist his services. Or maybe they threw him a few bucks to take a shot at it.

Regardless of why he did it, the irony here is obvious. You have a group (WDC) formed to denounce special interest influence in legislative issues serving as a special interest attempting to influence legislative issues. On the one hand, they denounce the exercise of free speech by some interest groups, but expect to get a free pass when they do the very same thing.

As long as the local media insist on pretending McCabe has any credibility, I will insist on proving that he does not.

Greatest title of all time, by the way. Even though it makes me sound like a self-satistfied dittohead.

From the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel today, in a story about the New Berlin school district dropping their membership in the Wisconsin Association of School Boards:

Thomas said “the final straw” in his decision to seek an end to the district’s association with WASB was a short item published in April on the Weblog of Journal Sentinel columnists Cary Spivak and Dan Bice. Spivak and Bice wrote about bloggers ridiculing Ashley for a column he wrote in Wisconsin School News that linked support for the Taxpayer Protection Amendment and prewar Nazi Germany.

Ashley said his words in the Wisconsin School News piece have since been taken out of context. “The word Nazi never even appeared,” he said. “There were some media that misrepresented the content of that piece, which was unfortunate. . . . I wasn’t aware that an opinion column would be something that led to their decision.”

Gee, I wonder who those bloggers that Spivak and Bice were writing about could have been?

And just for the record, here’s Ashley’s quote about the TPA. Draw your own conclusion:

After World War II, when totalitarianism was defeated in Germany and elsewhere, our decentralized democratic foundation was widely hailed and celebrated. Americans recognized that state control of schools in Germany was one clear aspect of that society that had gone in the wrong direction.

Some lawmakers in Madison seem to have forgotten both their American history and their civics lessons as they are clearly willing to impose their will on every school district in the state of Wisconsin.

Of course we all love Brian Fraley, but what the hell was this?

From a Van Hollen for Attorney General press release announcing their new mobile headquarters:

“And while we know those who fear a J. B. victory will snicker about ‘a heavily armed recreational vehicle,’ this Mobile HQ will be a huge benefit to the campaign and to the hundreds of grassroots volunteers who will staff JB this summer,” said Fraley. “Truth be told, even we’ve made a few references to the movie Stripes, but this campaign and J.B.’s determination to work for the entire state is serious business.”

J.B. is running for what again? Aren’t there a couple references from “Meatballs” they could have thrown in?

After doing some research, I figured out what was going on at the Van Hollen headquarters.

Time to get your butt over to MLB.com to vote for the Major League All-Star teams. Voting ends this Thursday, and it’s easy as can be. It’s Voces de la Frontera’s dream – no ID necessary, no proof of residence, and you can vote up to 25 times.

I may be violating some provision of McCain-Feingold here, but I strongly urge you to vote for Bill Hall for National League shortstop. There’s an assortment of slop at NL SS, and JJ Hardy is listed as the Brewers’ representative. Hall probably actually deserves to be the starting shortstop, but he’s not even on the ballot, so you have to write him in. It won’t make any difference, but consider it your Nader protest vote. If I can get my 8 readers to vote 25 times each, that’s… well, I don’t know how many that is, but it seems like a lot.

Oh, and vote for Carlos Lee, too. Or you could be like my uncle with downs’ syndrome and just vote for all the Brewers. Now you know where Brady Clark’s vote came from.

Daniel Suhr from the GOP3.com blog today makes a good attempt to identify state government programs to cut to help out with the $2.5 billion budget deficit.

Unfortunately, the programs he identifies don’t even amount to a drop in the bucket to help fix the deficit. He mentions a couple of Governor’s councils and the Department of Regulation and Licensing, which is funded primarily through licensing fees to professions they oversee. Eliminating the department wouldn’t save real taxpayers any money at all.

Very few people in the state really have an accurate picture of what the state budget looks like. Generally, people think that we can make up the budget deficit by not giving elected officials raises, or cutting down on their travel, or eliminating the Department of Natural Resources, or whatever.

For those of you interested in what the state general purpose budget look like, here’s a great document from the Legislative Fiscal Bureau that breaks everything out into categories for you. The general purpose budget programs are the most interesting, because they are the programs paid for through sales and income taxes that everyone pays. You’ll notice that the DNR, for example, is funded almost primarily through user fees like hunting and fishing licenses, whereas school aids are paid for exclusively through taxes everyone pays.

As you can see, 56.7% of the GPR budget for the next two years is made up of aids to local governments. This is a major problem with the framework of Wisconsin government – if the Legislature were to cut any of that aid, it would be made up by local governments (cities, towns, school districts), in the form of higher property taxes. So by showing some fiscal restraint, the state would in effect be raising the most hated tax in the state. In this sense, almost 60% of the GPR budget is off the table when cuts need to be made, since state lawmakers don’t want to be stuck with the stigma of raising property taxes.

Another 19.7% of the GPR budget goes to aids to individuals, with Medical Assistance (11.8%) making up the lion’s share of that appropriation. While it is certainly possible to cut money from these programs, it hasn’t proven to be politically popular to do so. Threatening Grandma’s Medicaid isn’t exactly a recipe for electoral success.

That leaves 23.6% of the budget remaining to make real cuts. Amid this category are things like the UW System (7.3%) and the Department of Corrections (6%). The UW has been cut over the last two budgets, and cutting Corrections could mean more criminals on the streets. This really leaves a sliver of state government that it would really be possible to cut without consequences at the ballot box, as elected officials haven’t shown the fortitude to go in and make fundamental changes in other areas.

Conservatives will always complain that their elected officials don’t want to make the tough choices to keep taxes and spending down. They may be forgetting ex-Governor Scott McCallum.

When McCallum took over in 2001, he was handed an enormous budget shortfall. In his proposed budget adjustment bill in early 2002, he made up for some of that shortfall by using tobacco settlement funds to plug the hole. However, McCallum actually did exactly what conservatives are looking for – he stuck his neck out and proposed ending a large state program.

In his budget adjustment bill, McCallum proposed phasing out the shared revenue program, which sends state taxpayer money back to local governments (7.3% of the current GPR budget). Recognizing that local elected officials would simply raise taxes to make up for the lost aid, he also proposed a freeze on property tax levies. With this budget proposal, McCallum showed he was willing to take on the spending lobby and shake up the business as usual in the Capitol.

In the 2002 election, McCallum was hammered by local officials for proposing to cut off their aid. Many local officials who leaned Republican couldn’t stomach voting for McCallum because of his bold initiative. Aided by Libertarian Ed Thompson’s entrance into the race, Jim Doyle beat the unpopular McCallum.

McCallum may have been a bad candidate. He made a tragic mistake by taking some of the money he saved by eliminating shared revenue and putting it towards public schools, thinking that the teachers’ union would look more favorably on his candidacy (they did not). But for all the negatives associated with his brief tenure as governor, he deserves credit for doing something that nobody has the guts to do now – he made a real proposal to cut a $1 billion annual state program, which would have fundamentally changed the framework of state government.

Unfortunately, because of this bold initiative, McCallum alienated a lot of local officials that went back to their constituents to complain of cuts to police and fire service. In the end, doing the right thing certainly contributed to him losing his job – and the Legislature noticed.

The way the state funds local governments is a complex, confusing mess. When a property taxpayer wants to complain about their taxes, they don’t know who to blame. The local officials say they’re not getting enough money from the state. The state says the locals are spending too much, and the locals are the ones that ultimately set the property tax levies. The two levels of government are constantly pointing to each other, and there’s no accountability.

The government that raises the tax should be the government that spends the tax. That way, governments are more directly accountable for their decisions. Wisconsin needs to pick up on McCallum’s lead and wean local governments off of state tax money. If that means giving the locals more options to raise local revenue, then so be it. At least people would be able to walk into their alderman’s office or show up at a school board meeting to protest their tax level, rather than having to navigate a complex bureaucracy to figure out exactly why their taxes are so high.

My best friend’s wife just had a baby girl. I had a great time talking to him on the phone about becoming a daddy for the first time, because a lot of our childbirth experiences were virtually identical. I had wanted to do a post about what becoming a daddy for the first time is like, but they had the kid before I got around to doing it. I’ve seen a lot of articles about what childbirth is like for women, but few about what it’s like for men. So here it is.

All the time leading up to the birth of the child is spent focused on the mother’s needs. They learn what to buy, how to breathe, what to pack for the hospital, how to nurse, etc. I actually decided to go for the Husband of the Year Award and show up to the breastfeeding classes, just to support my wife. When I walked out of the room after the class, I was clutching my chest because my nipples hurt so much just from watching the breastfeeding movies. If men had to breastfeed, the human race would have died off about a hundred thousand years ago and a pterodactyl would be sitting at your desk doing your job right now.

As much as you prepare for the actual moment you have to go to the hospital, you will completely lose your mind when it happens. You scramble around the house like a hamster on Red Bull to get your bags together and thrown into the car. The only upside is that you get to drive like a complete maniac on the way to the hospital, just like they do on TV – my driving was so bad, I’m surprised the baby didn’t jump out to tell me to slow down (nothing more irritating than a nagging inter-uterine driver).

When you get to the hospital, they will put you in a little waiting room where they do a preliminary check to make sure you’re really having a baby and you’re not just there pulling an elaborate ruse to get the free mini-Pepsis from the OB snack bar. After they check the mother out, they will tell you that there’s a chance that despite your rush to get to the hospital, the baby may not be ready to come out and you may have to go home for a few hours. At that point, you will tell them that you are leaving the hospital with a baby, whether it’s yours or someone else’s.

Soon, they put your wife on drugs to try to induce the child to come out. This is far more effective than your idea of dangling two free Packer tickets down between her legs. Now is the time to take pictures, as within hours she will have convinced the staff at the hospital that you are an active al-Qaeda operative. Once the contractions start, you and your wife will enter an entirely new phase of your relationship. For details, see any Bill Cosby standup routine from the last 30 years.

Obviously, during this time your wife is in extraordinary pain, and any man that suggests otherwise is secretly shipped off to a remote internment camp for insensitive men and never heard from again. But you will feel a deep sense of utter helplessness, and it’s hard. Standing before you is the person you care most about in the entire world in extreme pain – and the most you can do is offer her the occasional ice cube. Jokes are not appreciated. The only thing that would possibly make her feel better would be the sight of a pack of rabid dingoes attacking your crotch.

During the entire night, hospital staff is running in and checking your wife’s progress. There are doctors, nurses, interns, and other staff that have an all-access pass to her womb. It won’t surprise you a bit to find out that some guy examining your wife’s cervix is the Pepsi machine mechanic just coming in to see if everything was alright.

Finally, it’s time for an epidural, which will numb her from mid chest down and completely change the trajectory of the evening. For one, you will find out that your relationship may not be as strong as you thought after she proposes on the spot to the anesthesiologist. She will treat this guy like he’s George Clooney handing her an Ann Taylor credit card with no limit. You instantly become the fifth most important person in the room (behind the doctor, your wife, the baby, and the soft drink mechanic, who won’t leave for some reason).

Finally, it comes time to push the baby out. You rush to your wife’s side and grab her hand, reminding her to breathe. She’s pushing as hard as she can, swearing that she can’t push any more. If you had half this much determination, you’d be running your company instead of sitting on your butt reading anonymous blogs all day. For some reason, you bend your knees and get in an athletic crouch, not unlike how your little league coach told you to stand when you played shortstop (it may also be helpful to wear a cup to protect yourself in this situation, too). This may make you feel like you’re helping, but really has nothing to do with whether the baby is coming out or not.

When the baby refuses to come out, the doctor will ask you to grab your wife’s leg and pull it back to get her in a better position. You jump right in, not realizing that this isn’t exactly what you signed up for when you joined your health plan. Later, you will ask the doctor for a discount since you had to do some of the work yourself. Seriously – if I’m getting a new muffler and have to bring my own screwdriver, it better not be full price.

And finally, within a split second, your life will change forever. You’ll hear the most important sound you’ll ever hear – that of your child crying. You’ll be in such shock, that you won’t even notice when the doctor asks you if you want to cut the umbilical cord, and you actually do it – despite being completely grossed out by the concept an hour earlier.

You look around the room and see your wife’s blood, and you will be scared out of your mind. You’ll look at her and suddenly your entire relationship will flash before your eyes. In an instant, you’ll think of the night you met. You’ll think about your first date, when you stayed up all night laughing nervously, wondering if she really liked you or not. You’ll remember the night at the UW Memorial Union Terrace when you finally realized that this was the woman that you wanted to spend the rest of your life with, and how you proposed to her on that spot. She’ll be laying there with tears in her eyes, drenched in sweat and hair messed up, but at that instant, you will never have seen a woman so beautiful in your life.

You can’t believe that any woman would ever have so much faith and trust in you that she would go through such excruciating pain to deliver a child. Fortunately, in case you forget that, you will be reminded of it approximately 8,345 times over the next twelve months. You thank the Lord that you could be there to witness the birth of this child, seeing as there’s really only an even-money chance you were there for the conception.

You fumble around for your camera to try to get pictures. You start sobbing like Richard Simmons after meeting an 800 pound guy that has to be removed from his house with a crane. Your wife starts breast feeding the baby, and you try to get a picture of it without getting too much of the breast in the picture (your friends will be looking at these, after all). It is incredible that babies have the innate ability to breast feed right out of the womb – much like you were born with the uncanny ability to watch the Brewers, listen to music, and scratch yourself all at the same time.

Apparently unaware of your court record, the doctors hand your baby over to you. It is at this point precisely that you are overwhelmed with about 100 feelings simultaneously. You can’t believe this is all real, and that something so great could happen to you. I mean, you are the guy, after all, who used to throw lawn furniture off the top of your fraternity house to see if it would break. You’re the guy who would have girls drop you off three blocks away from your house after a date so they wouldn’t find out exactly where you lived. You’re the guy that used to get drunk and wash all the cars on your block at three o’clock in the morning, hoping some hot chick would appreciate the gesture.

And here in your hands is the greatest thing that God ever created. It feels like you are now the first person ever to figure out procreation – that nobody could have ever done this before. You can’t believe that somehow this actually sometimes occurs without the father being involved. Sure, you may be a sap, but it’s inconceivable to you that fathers leave and don’t come back, or don’t even know that one of their children is born at all.

It is at that point that suddenly you realize your life has a purpose. As listlessly as you may have lived your life, now you are responsible for another human being. Sure, it took you an extra year or two to finish college, and you may never have gotten the job you really wanted, but suddenly all of your personal ambitions and travails seem trivial. Your life is clear as day now – I have to take care of this baby, and do the best job I possibly can. And that’s it, really. Nothing else even comes close.

For years, you have been wondering whether anyone will ever remember you when you’re gone. What have you ever done that’s really affected anyone in any real way? You never wrote a hit screenplay, never played in the NBA, never volunteered at the Boys and Girls club. You’re afraid that if you were to disappear, nobody would even know you were there at all. Now, all at once, you realize what your legacy will be – you know that by raising this kid to be a kind, generous, and hard working adult, you’ve given the world the best possible gift you can.

What you don’t realize at the time, however, is the fact that you are no longer writing your own life story. Those days of going boozing with the boys? Done. Movies? What are those? You won’t ever eat in a restaurant again that doesn’t offer you the option of “Biggie Sizing.” You will soon come to recognize that you are now relegated to a bit part in your own autobiography. The seven pound, four ounce conspirator in your arms has now taken over as head writer of your life story. And you will never mind a bit.

The digital clock above you says 7:12 A.M. You’ve now been awake all night waiting for this moment. It’s time to catch what little sleep you can before your life starts all over again. You doze off thinking how great it is to be a dad. And wondering if you have to prove the baby’s yours for the hospital to validate your parking ticket.

If you just happened not to speak English, and you just happened to be robbed by a guy wearing a bandana wrapped around his nose, and you just happened to take life saving advice from aerobics instructors, then this video is for you, my friend. You will not see anything funnier this week – that’s my solid gold guarantee.

Via Dave Barry

As an aside, being rubbed by two men can cost you a lot in Japan.

A couple of weeks back, I ridiculed Brian Blanchard for his attempt to keep former Assembly Speaker Scott Jensen in jail while he awaited his appeal. Blanchard laughably argued that Jensen would somehow “reoffend,” despite the fact that he is no longer in the State Legislature.

This week, predictably, Judge Steven Ebert agreed with me and ruled that Jensen could remain a free man while filing his appeal. Ebert couldn’t completely help himself, however, as he gave Jensen another in-court tongue whipping. One wonders if Ebert is going to show up at the birth of Jensen’s next child and berate him for his low sperm count.

In related news, a relative unkown in Waukesha County politics named Sven Jenovich has filed papers to run for his recently vacated Assembly seat. Originally a goat herder in Prague, Jenovich has recently moved to America to teach motor scooter safety to legless senior citizens.

Authorized and paid for by Jenovich for Assembly, Soda Popinski treasurer