Christian Schneider

Author, Columnist

Month: March 2009 (page 1 of 2)

The Daily Me

In our podcast last week, Marc Eisen and I discussed what would happen to political discourse when newspapers eventually fade away – specifically, how people will talk to one another about politics when all the news they read is news that they have hand-selected to suit their ideology.

This phenomenon has been dubbed “The Daily Me” by M.I.T.’s Nicholas Negroponte, via New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof:

When we go online, each of us is our own editor, our own gatekeeper. We select the kind of news and opinions that we care most about.

Nicholas Negroponte of M.I.T. has called this emerging news product The Daily Me. And if that’s the trend, God save us from ourselves.

That’s because there’s pretty good evidence that we generally don’t truly want good information – but rather information that confirms our prejudices. We may believe intellectually in the clash of opinions, but in practice we like to embed ourselves in the reassuring womb of an echo chamber.

One classic study sent mailings to Republicans and Democrats, offering them various kinds of political research, ostensibly from a neutral source. Both groups were most eager to receive intelligent arguments that strongly corroborated their pre-existing views.

(It is somewhat ironic that I am linking to a free online editorial that demonstrates exactly why newspapers are going under, and creating this self-selection process that I then decry. )

The irony is also not lost on me that someone that works for WPRI, a think tank with a conservative point of view, is complaining about people being able to get conservative information.  But we are in the persuasion business, and the newspapers are in a different business altogether – at some point, someone has to be the arbiter of what’s newsworthy, whether it fits our ideology or not.  We can all certainly work together – WPRI and and active media don’t have to be mutually exclusive.

Ahhhh, The Simpler Days

Hit the Clem Snide/Heligoats show at the High Noon Saloon last night.  (Photos available here.)  It was, as all Clem Snide shows are, fantastic.

Before the show, my buddy and I were trying to get together a list of friend to invite to the show.  But we ran into a snag.  We have two gay friends who were partners for like a decade, but recently had a pretty bitter split.  From what I understand, they prefer not to be in the same room.  So we could only invite one or the other – but not both.  But which one to choose?  We\’re equally good friends with each of them.

This is a major complication with having gay friends who are dating each other.  If they split, you have to pick favorites.  When you have a guy friend dating a woman, the breakup process is easy.  You just cut the ex-girlfriend out of the social circle and move on.  (As Descartes once said, “Bro’s before ho’s.”)  But when you have two friends of the same sex, it’s impossible to pick one with which to socialize.

Anyway, I know I keep foisting this on you, but it’s my most favoritest song on the new Clem Snide album.  It’s just unspeakably gorgeous:

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And here’s “Movie Guns” by Chris Otepka, who performs as “Heligoats:”

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The Fountain of Youth

After I finished college, I already started to feel old.  Little did I know how old I’d feel 13 years later, as I blew through my mid-30’s.

But after reading the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel today, I found the fountain of youth:

GOP hopes to reinvent itself with ‘young guns’ such as Ryan

Paul Ryan is 2 years older than I am, and in Congress he’s still considered “young.”  This is perfect – all I need to do is get into the House of Representatives.  I’ll be like the Miley Cyrus of the legislative branch.

Anyone know how I get into this “Congress” the story was talking about?

Taking a Left Turn on Immigration

Apparently, sparks flew at the Joint Committee on Finance budget hearing on Wednesday when UW-Whitewater student Matthew Guttmann and State Representative Josh Zepnick sparred over a budget provision that grants in-state tuition to certain undocumented immigrants in Wisconsin.   According to Wispolitics.com, the following exchange occurred:

Zepnick who authored legislation to allow the tuition break, sarcastically commended him for being in college because it is a place to learn.

“You need to finish it,” Zepnick said, pointing out that children of illegal immigrants born in the United States are citizens and it is their parents who are having trouble getting documentation.

“What you said is not factually correct,” Zepnick said, adding that less than half a percent of students would get the benefit.

Ironically, it is the condescending Zepnick who seemed to have his facts wrong.  While he tried to buttress his argument by pointing out that children born in America to illegal parents are already citizens, that’s really an irrelevant point.  His bill – and the budget – specifically grant the benefit to a “citizen of another country” – meaning, someone who has immigrated here either with their parents or on their own.

(UPDATE:  You can watch the Zepnick-Guttmann exchange here – but you have to skip ahead to the 3 hour, 1 minute, and 54 second mark.)

It seems clear that Zepnick was a jackass to this kid.  But here’s the thing…

I actually…

Kind of…

(Covering head)…

Agree with Zepnick.

It’s true.  Pursuant to certain qualifications, I think this benefit is warranted.  In December of 2007, I wrote this in response to a WPRI poll that said 76% of Wisconsin residents opposed allowing illegal immigrants to apply for drivers’ licenses, 86% opposed giving illegal immigrants in-state tuition, and 46% disapproved of “illegal immigrant children” attending public schools:

As you can see, there’s a big difference between what respondents thought about children and adult illegal immigrants. It appears that there’s a gap of people more willing to forgive illegal immigrant children than their parents. To them, it likely makes sense that children shouldn’t pay for the mistakes their parents make.

Yet these elementary school children will grow up and go to college. And many of them will be the same kids that the public feels strongly should not get in-state tuition. Presumably, that would mean they would have to pay out of state tuition or be denied entry into a state school altogether. In other words, their education would likely end at a high school degree.

In fact, elementary school students receive a much larger public subsidy than University of Wisconsin students. If the public was concerned about tax money being used to subsidize illegal immigrants, elementary school per-pupil spending should logically be the more difficult subsidy to stomach, considering per-pupil aid is so much greater.

Of course, the difficult question of why illegal immigrant children should be allowed to attend public elementary and high schools, but not colleges, is left up to the people who support the former but not the latter. It appears that 46% of people oppose any and all concession to illegal immigrants, not matter what the age – and another 10% side with the illegal immigrants on all issues. (I am assuming, of course, that there aren’t a lot of people who oppose elementary school subsidies but support taxpayer aid for college.) It would be interesting to listen to the rationale of the people in the middle – who may support one, but not the other – and why.

Most likely, respondents probably viewed illegal immigrants trying to attend the UW as trying to mooch off the system after they crossed the border. It’s unlikely that they understood that many of these kids are actually graduating from Wisconsin public schools.

I understand that people don’t want illegal immigrants to just be showing up and gaming the system, which is why I suggested mandating that the student had to be in a Wisconsin high school for four years to be eligible (the budget last session required one year of residency.)  It appears that this time around, in order to make the bill more palatable, the residency requirement was upped to three years.  It also requires that the student will have to at least file an application for U.S. residency.

So, to be clear – these kids are already going to the same high schools as our kids (for at least three years of high school).  They have the same teachers.  They play on the same sports teams.  They take the same tests, and get the same high school degree.  They are indistinct from any other high school students.  By the time an undocumented child makes it from first grade to graduating high school, taxpayers have already sunk over $100,000 into that child’s education, whether they realize it or not. To pull the plug on those children because of the actions of their parents would be unfair, and would nullify the investment taxpayers have already made in the child.

We should have strict immigration policies that keep people from entering our country illegally.  But people who think that the federal government is just going to start rounding up law-abiding undocumented families and deporting them anytime soon are living in a dream world.  (Criminals, on the other hand should be banished immediately.)

So while they’re here, our state would be better off giving these kids the chance to make our state better, rather than sentencing them to a second class existence.  It’s not their fault.

(Complaints can be sent to Representative Josh Zepnick.)

Amazing How Far We’ve Come

A few weeks back, the Wisconsin Historical Society held their “Odd Wisconsin” exhibit, where they lay out various interesting Wisconsin historical artifacts for public inspection.  The coolest thing there was a hand-written speech by Abe Lincoln that he delivered in Milwaukee in 1859, although I’m not sure how that counted as “odd.”  It was mostly just awesome.

I chuckled at this 1912 anti-women’s suffrage poster, which claimed that allowing women to cast ballots would be doubling the “irresponsible vote.”

There was also an anti-suffrage poster (which I can’t find in the online collection) that depicted a woman juggling a baby, a frying pan, a broom, and a ballot.  The implication was that we can’t expect women to be able to juggle all of those responsibilities and still be expected to vote.  Just crazy.

Cool Story, Representative Sinicki

Last week, an Assembly committee held a hearing on a bill that would ban the use of racially offensive school mascots in Wisconsin.  State Representative Chris Sinicki delighted the crowd with her own puzzling story about the “White Wizards.” (Skip ahead to the 1 hour, 25 minute mark of the video.)

Your tax dollars at work.

Observing the Law of Rule

The summer of my twelfth year, my father dictated to me my summer job: I was going to have to paint the picket fence around our backyard. I had never painted anything before, so I punished him by peppering him with inane questions. “Where do I start?” “What size brush should I use?” And so on. “I don’t care how you do it – just get it done!” he snapped. At least that’s what I think he said, as my ears were ringing from the accompanying smack upside my head.

As it turns out, state law very much follows “dad law.” When the legislature passes a law and the governor signs it, it constitutes a directive – “paint the fence.” But in many cases, it leaves the minute details up to the state department that will be carrying out the broad new law – “just get it done.” Departments accomplish the “I don’t care how you do it” part by passing “rules,” which reside comfortably in legal purgatory, somewhere between real laws and complete anarchy.

In many cases, the Legislature leaves their newly passed statutes overly broad, to avoid codifying every little detail in state law. For instance, state law dictates what crimes will land you in jail. Rules determine what kind of nudie magazines you will be allowed to view when you’re in the joint. Rules govern everything from how big a pier you can have on your house to what classes your barber has to take to obtain a license, including – and this is not a joke – 35 “theory hours” of “Shaving, beard and mustache shaping and trimming.” Who can forget Aristotle’s treatise on mustache waxing?

Yet rules, while having the force of law, are passed in a peculiar way that circumvents the traditional legislative process – and opens the door for hijinks. Rules changes are drafted by a department, then sent to standing legislative committees, who may then object to the rule if they believe it to be a bad idea. If it draws an objection, the rule goes to the Joint Rules Committee, where it can be suspended. However, if it is suspended, the committee must introduce bills changing the law to remedy their percieved problem with the rule. If those bills do not pass, the rule goes into effect – without ever having been altered by the legislature.

Thus, in effect, rules are like laws in reverse. Whereas passing a new law requires a bill proactively passing through both houses and being signed by the governor, rules essentially start as law and require bipartisanship to invalidate them. Thus, in the case of a split Legislature, one party can always block an objection to a rule made by their party’s governor.

This has become increasingly problematic in recent years, when departments are taking more liberties with their rulemaking authority. Instead of merely carrying out the directives given them by state law, some departments are granting themselves entirely new lawmaking ability, knowing that a split legislature will likely pave the way.

For instance, the Wisconsin Government Accountability Board has voted to promulgate a rule that grants their members the sole legal authority to regulate campaign advertising during election season. While the law creating the GAB merely charges them with enforcing current election law, they have decided to settle this contentious issue that has confounded the U.S. Supreme Court for decades by merely making up their own law. This isn’t painting the fence – this is building a whole new picket fence that runs right through our living room.

Other rulemaking attempts have been equally as brazen. In 2005, Governor Jim Doyle actually attempted to raise the state’s minimum wage via administrative rule, knowing that he could simply veto any bill passed by Republicans if they attempted to object to the change. The State Supreme Court is attempting to use the rules process to wrestle legislative redistricting away from the Legislature, which clearly usurps legislative authority to set its own Senate and Assembly districts. Recently, the Supreme Court enacted a rule that changes the instances when tribal courts have jurisdiction over non-tribal members, which will have the effect of denying many litigants their right to a trial by a Wisconsin court. In a blistering dissent, Justice Patience Roggensack observed the new rule “undermines federal and state constitutional and statutory rights of litigants.”

New laws are the bright, shiny new baubles on which we all like to gaze. Enacting them takes all the elements of a good political novel – intrigue, secret deals, undue influence, and bloated, self-important speeches on the legislative floor. On the other hand, administrative rules have all the sexiness of Jim Doyle in spandex bike pants. In fact, in contrast to laws, rules only actually pass when nobody thinks to publicize them. But like Doyle’s bike pants, the rulemaking process is beginning to expand beyond the limit set by law (and good taste.) Maybe these bureaucrats need my dad to smack them in the head with a paintbrush.

-March 23, 2009

Who’s Telling the Truth About the Court?

These days, it’s hard to get the Wisconsin Supreme Court to agree on anything.  But back in December of 2007, the Court stood united in its push for public financing of Supreme Court elections.  Earlier in the year, conservative Annette Ziegler had run a successful race against liberal attorney  Linda Clifford that featured substantial advertising from interested third party groups.  In their zeal to restrict these types of ads, the Court issued a letter calling for full public financing of court races, saying “Judges must not only be fair, neutral, impartial and non-partisan but also should be so perceived by the public.”

Well.

The Ziegler race was followed up in 2008 by Mike Gableman’s race against incumbent Justice Louis Butler – a race which featured ads that clearly obfuscated the role of a Supreme Court justice.  The ads – run primarily by the candidates themselves – portrayed the Supreme Court as some kind of law enforcement board, intent on keeping criminals in prison.  (We denounced this tactic at the time.)

Following Gableman’s victory, ideas started to flow on how to get court elections back to focusing on what the court actually does.  The Wisconsin State Journal has been on a Don-Quixote like quest to eliminate judicial elections altogether, believing voters aren’t capable of picking their own justices.

But the issue of public financing of Court elections still lingers.  Public financing supporters believe that shutting down independent ads and leaving the electioneering up to the candidates themselves will leave voters with a much clearer understanding of the role of the Supreme Court.

To those people, I offer this television ad from Chief Justice and current candidate Shirley Abrahamson:

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As you can see, Chief Justice Abrahamson is going to help you wiggle out of your bad mortgage – regardless of any kind of contract you signed, or regardless of whether any case dealing with your mortgage is actually before the Court.  Also, Abrahamson is “protecting consumers from abuse,” whatever that means.  She “stands up for all of us.”  Then, the denouement, from Abrahamson’s own mouth:

“The best thing a judge can do is to help people.  That’s what I do.”

Is she serious?  The best thing a judge can do is to apply the law as written to certain facts of a case.  The judge’s role isn’t to “stand up” for anyone.  “Standing up” for people means writing your own new laws to generate a favorable outcome – whether or not it actually ends up hurting people in the long run.  (Incidentally, where are these cases that “help people?”  Doesn’t being a judge necessarily mean resolving disputes in which some party eventually ends up not being “helped?”)

So I dare anyone to look at  that ad and tell me with a straight face that leaving campaigning up to the candidates themselves is going to give anyone a clearer idea of what the Court does.  If anything, Abrahamson’s own ad leaves voters with a cloudier understanding of her role as a judge – this is an ad that could easily be run by a candidate for legislative office.  That ad does more to undermine Abrahamson’s own “impartiality” than any ad by a third party could.

All public financing will do will be to shut out advertising that might actually set the record straight on Abrahamson’s record. So it’s no wonder Abrahamson favors public financing in Supreme Court races -with it in place, she could continue to exploit people with bad mortgages with impunity.

March Madness Thoughts

After this weekend, I\’m pretty sure my couch is going to file suit against me.  After the overuse and remote control-related abuse it took following 96 hours of NCAA basketball, it\’s probably going to form a union with my other furniture and go on strike.  But just a couple points:

1.  I\’m trying to think of a worse way that the four Marquette seniors could have ended their careers.  But if fans had thrown flesh-eating pirhanas onto the court that ate Jerel McNeal down to a skeleton, I\’m not sure it would have been as bad as Lazar Hayward stepping on the end line on the inbounds pass with the game on the line.  As one prominent ex-Milwaukee area sideline reporter wrote on her Facebook status, Hayward should be forced to repay his scholarship for the last four years.

After what turned out to be the last play, when the Marquette player (who was it?) got clobbered shooting a 3-pointer, I am impressed that Buzz Williams didn\’t get thrown out of the game.  If I were the coach, I would have tried to set fire to one of the refs at that point.  Not that it mattered, but it\’s pretty clear the refs had decided the game was over.

2.  I also spent a decent amount of time watching the Wisconsin high school boy\’s basketball tournament, eventually won by Madison Memorial.  Perhaps this is just another sign of my cultural detachment, but I was a little shocked at how many of the players on both teams in the championship game had tattoos.  It\’s easy to lose track when you watch so much basketball, but these kids are in high school.  One player on Memorial, Vander Blue (a future Wisconsin Badger) is completely inked up on his left shoulder – and he\’s a junior.  He probably got it when he was 15 or 16 years old.  (Blue threw down a filthy dunk over some poor kid in the semifinal game, which I wish I had video of.)

I had some vague recollection of the state law setting an age limit for tattoos, so I looked it up.  According to state statute 948.70(2), \”any person who tattoos or offers to tattoo a child (in this case, anyone under the age of 18)  is subject to a Class D forfeiture.\”  So, if you\’re caught tattooing a 13 year old, you have to pay 200 bucks.  It seems there would be an exception for parental consent, but that particular statute only allows for the tattooing of a child by a physician.

Of course, at no point in Mr. Blue\’s young life has anyone explained to him what a terrible idea it is to get a full-arm tattoo at age 15.  I generally want to forget everything that happened to me in high school – yet he\’s going to carry around whatever this is on his arm for the rest of his life.  Same goes for all the kids in that game that were tatted up.  It just seems that we, as adults, are now afraid to tell kids that what they\’re doing is wrong.  So now Vander Blue gets to walk around with a proud testament to his ignorance on his shoulder.

3.  If you watch enough of the high school tournament, you quickly realize that the whole thing is funded by WEAC, the state\’s teachers\’ union.  This would be the same union kicking and screaming that they don\’t have enough money to adequately educate kids – that their teachers have to buy their own pencils, rulers, and whatnot.

Could there possibly be a bigger waste of money than advertising for the state teachers\’ union?  It\’s not like they\’re trying to get people to buy toothpaste or workout videos or anything.  They already have a virtual monopoly on education in the state – it\’s not like people are going to see these commercials and say, \”whoa – sign my kid up for a public education!\”

But whether your kid goes to a public school or not, you\’re paying for these ads.  The money goes from your pocket to the government, which pays the teachers, who are forced to pay union dues, to WEAC, who then puts ads on TV trying to convince you that  they need more of your money.  It\’s the governmental circle of life.

4.  Bo Ryan is one of the 5 best coaches in NCAA basketball.  The results he wrings out of the talent he has is astounding.

Sheridan’s Love Letter to Himself

There’s an old saying that talking to yourself doesn’t make you crazy – but when you start answering yourself, it means trouble.

A couple of days ago, Assembly Speaker Mike Sheridan announced that he wanted pay freezes for the full Assembly.  Fair enough – although I maintain that if elected representatives cave on an issue like this after a mere hint of criticism, they’ll literally cave on anything.  But whatever.

In order to get the ball rolling, Sheridan had to make a request of the Joint Committee on Employment Relations – half of which he, as Speaker of the Assembly, controls.  So yesterday, Sheridan had to essentially send himself a letter requesting he call a meeting of this committee.  It turned out to be persuasive, as Sheridan apparently convinced himself that the commitee should meet.

In fact, we know Sheridan got the letter he wrote to himself, because he then actually responded to it.  In his public response, he said:

“Given the record budget deficit facing Wisconsin, and the tough economic challenges working families are struggling with today, freezing the next scheduled legislator pay increase is simply the right thing to do. As Co- Chair of the Joint Committee on Employment Relations, I will see to it that the committee will consider and approve this action at our next scheduled meeting.”

Of course, this is all necessary to create a paper trail, so Sheridan can take credit for freezing legislator salaries when it finally happens.  (Meanwhile, dozens of legislative staff will continue to make significantly more than their bosses.) But it just feeds the public’s view of the Legislature as being out of touch with how the real world works.

The Picture is Getting Clearer

We’ve made the case numerous times on this blog that Governor Doyle’s proposed budget uses too much one-time money to balance the state budget.  Just yesterday, the Legislative Fiscal Bureau estimated the structural deficit for 2011-13 at $1.5 billion – and keep in mind, that’s with $3 billion in new ongoing taxes added to the rolls.

It seems that some local government officials are starting to pick up on the house of cards Doyle has built.  In Madison ( of all places), a school board member has written a criticism of Doyle’s use of one-time money, understanding the peril which awaits school budgets in the future:

One such shell game, according to Christian Schneider, conservative blogger and guest speaker at the WASB Legislative Issues conference, is for Doyle and the Legislature to continue to pull billions out of one budget and plug other budget holes.

“This trap is very alluring,” Schneider says, “especially if the use of non-routine revenues is implemented through a series of complex transfers that are not easy for the general public to understand. In the short term, this allows policymakers to avoid spending cuts. But in the long term, the practice can’t be sustained.”

It’s also bad governance.

[…]

Doyle recently urged school districts to remain under the revenue caps as they spend federal dollars. He said, “If they don’t, they’ll face big budget holes in future years and possibly anger homeowners if property taxes go up too much.”

Doyle should take his own advice. A budget dependent on one-time federal money for education and transfers to plug holes in budget gaps is shortsighted at best.

Until state and local leaders, along with the public, advance the conversation on how we fund schools and at the same time achieve educational excellence, we will continue to play the fools for the Bard. Let’s hope it doesn’t end in tragedy.

Of course, quoting me may be the kiss of death in Madison – but at least it shows fiscal responsibility can be an issue shared by both parties.

What if an Election Fell in the Woods…

This is just too good.

For years, “good government” groups have been kicking and screaming about independent entities running their own television ads during campaign season.  (Commonly referred to as “free speech.”)  Groups like the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign (a registered lobbying organization) have unironically argued that this gives lobbying organizations too much influence, and have pushed for a change in the law to ban such ads.

A letter WDC Executive Director Mike McCabe sent to the state Government Accountability Board urging them to regulate these ads sums it up best:

Five special interest groups spent close to $8 million in the last two state Supreme Court races on what most of the groups insist on calling “issue advocacy.” To voters across the state, it meant truckloads of money were spent on loads of TV ads smearing the candidates. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel called the campaigning “tawdry” and “despicable.” A State Bar Association judicial campaign integrity committee called the advertising “deliberately misleading.”

Sounds pretty bad.

But here’s the thing – when groups spend all this money on these TV ads, it has the effect of educating the public about the candidates.  UW-Madison political scientist Ken Goldstein has conducted studies that show voters are more knowledgeable about the candidates when these ads run, and voter turnout is higher in these races, as more people are aware a campaign is actually going on.  So clearly, banning these ads makes voters both less informed, and less likely to vote.

Spending in Supreme Court races has become the main battleground against these kinds of ads, especially since conservative judges have routinely been winning.  This, despite the fact that the most misleading and egregious ad in the last Supreme Court campaign was run by one of the candidates himself, eventual winner Mike Gableman.  Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce, the state’s largest business group, had routinely spent millions of dollars to help promote candidates they believed represented their interests – but in the current election for the Supreme Court, they have sat idly by, keeping their advertising to themselves.

And, of course, you can guess who the first to complain about WMC’s lack of spending is:

There’s a state Supreme Court election in a few weeks, and many people don’t even know it’s happening.

Wisconsin Democracy Campaign’s Mike McCabe says its partly due to a lack of advertising.

“This has been so under the radar that my fear is that people don’t know much about this race, don’t know hardly anything about the challenger.”

McCabe says he’s happy the contest focuses on the issues, but that doesn’t help if no one shows up to vote.

“It’s not a good thing to have a statewide election and have nobody notice.”

So here’s the guy who’s spent his whole career complaining about the toxicity of money in politics complaining about the lack of money in politics.  Would he now be happier if WMC was spending boatloads of money educating voters around the state?  Apparently, the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign knows exactly how much information voters need to make informed choices about their candidates.

As it stands, the Government Accountability Board is moving forward with its plan to shut down these third-party ads.  In doing so, as Mike McCabe has apparently figured out, it will be assuring us fewer voters and a less educated electorate.  That’s our state government – protecting us from an educated public discussion of our candidates.

I Am Certainly Not Implying Anything

On January 12th, I wrote this column about how federal corn subsidies are making us all fat.

56 days later, George F. Will wrote this column about how federal corn subsidies are making us all fat.

Freaky.

Today’s Dad E-mail: Friedman v. Donahue

Let me be clear – I love my Dad.  I owe everything I have to him.  But if I could hire someone to block him from sending me ten junk e-mails a day, I would.  God bless his heart, but if I get one more dopey chain e-mail from my dad, I am going to strangle him.

That being said, I have to give him credit for this one today.  It’s an interview between Milton Friedman and Phil Donahue from 1979, in which the Nobel Prize winning economist destroys the dopey lefty talk show host.

As All American Burger manager Brad Hamilton tells Spicoli with regard to the “No Shirt, No Shoes, No Service” sign in “Fast Times at Ridgemont High:”

“Learn it.  Know it.  Live it.”

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UPDATE:  This one is even better, although it clocks in at a half hour.  It’s shocking to see someone communicate a message of limited government and freedom in such a clear and concise manner.  Something no modern conservative politician seems to be able to do.

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I\’ve Got a Fever for More Schneider

I wrote an editorial for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that appeared on Sunday.  Most people haven\’t read it.

Guess who\’s recession-proof?

By Christian Schneider

Posted: Mar. 14, 2009

For the past year, workers around Wisconsin have been flinching when the phone rings. They don\’t want the next call they get to be the one where they find out they\’ve been laid off.

In late February, the state Department of Workforce Development reported what workers in Wisconsin already knew: Employment in the state was falling like a heifer dropped from an airplane. According to DWD, Wisconsin lost 72,500 private-sector jobs in the past year, causing the unemployment rate to leap to 7.6% – up 2.7 percentage points from last January. These unemployment numbers simply codified the pain families across the state are feeling as their loved ones struggle to cope with losing their jobs.

In the midst of the sagging job market, however, there is one sector that appears to be recession-proof. According to the DWD, while the private sector was hemorrhaging, government increased by a shocking 900 jobs. That\’s right – the same people who are supposed to turn this economy around haven\’t actually felt any of the pain. While families across the state are learning to cope with job loss, our government has circled the wagons to protect their own – demonstrating that they just don\’t get it.

The fact that the government continues to grow in a terrible economy actually explains the government\’s misguided response to the recession. Elected officials believe the salve for an ailing economy is to simply do what they know how to do best – continue to add more government jobs. They look at private-sector job loss as evidence that the private economy cannot be trusted to employ people on its own, and they are doing their best to shift jobs back over to the government dole. According to the nonpartisan Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance, fringe benefits for public employees run 50% higher than those in the private sector – so taxpayers will be asked to subsidize more expensive government jobs while they\’re losing their own.

And, thus, the regular carpenters, electricians and plumbers must pay for the continued excesses of all levels of government. According to the Federal Reserve, Americans lost 18% of their net worth in 2008, for a total loss of $11.2 trillion. Yet Gov. Jim Doyle\’s proposed state budget incorporates $2.2 billion in new taxes, including massive new taxes on the same businesses that represent our only hope of boosting employment in the state. These punitive taxes are meant to close a $5.9 billion deficit created by our elected officials, who now must face the consequences for spending well beyond taxpayers\’ ability to pay.

The growth in government jobs as incomes in the state recede further explains the fiscal dreamland in which our elected officials continue to reside. Minimum wage hikes, climate change regulations, sick leave mandates and higher job taxes all will serve to purge employees from business payrolls. Amid the squealing of public school teachers, the obeisant Doyle has vowed to eliminate the qualified economic offer, which guarantees teachers a 3.8% pay and benefits increase every year. Teachers complained about their pay being too low -think there\’s any recently laid-off employee of Harley-Davidson who wouldn\’t saw off his left leg for a QEO about now?

If you like the way Doyle and the Legislature have run the state government into the ground, you\’ll absolutely love it when they detonate your place of work. If they\’re half as effective at immolating the private sector as they have been in ruining government, then you can look forward to being dependent on an underfunded government program in no time.

And if our elected officials continue to pad their own jobs while costing us ours, it might be time to make them wait by the phone.

Christian Schneider is a senior fellow at the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute.

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