I check in on only three national bloggers: Kevin Drum, TBogg and Digby. And Drum is the best of them...

He excerpts this from a column in the L. A. Times:

Part-time food service employees are seeking the same health benefits — including coverage for their families — that their full-time counterparts enjoy. Extending these benefits to cafeteria staff who currently work only three hours a day would cost an estimated $40 million a year, according to school board calculations.

....This is fat that the food service's too-lean budget simply doesn't have. If health benefits were extended to these part-time workers, the CFPA estimates it would mean that the per-plate meal budget would be reduced from 85 cents to 49 cents. Making healthy food available for that amount would take a miracle of biblical proportions. So we'd be improving the healthcare of nearly 2,000 part-time workers at the expense of the 500,000 children who eat in public school cafeterias every day.

And Drum, blogging at Political Animal, gives analysis/reaction that pegs it precisely:

"I would happily pay for universal healthcare just so I never had to read an op-ed like this again. It's not that Williamson doesn't have a point, it's just that this beggar-thy-neighbor attitude is enough to make me retch, and I see it all the time. I don't get dental coverage, so why should grocery workers? My copay went up last year, so why shouldn't everyone else's? I don't pay for healthcare for my housecleaners, so why should I pay it for school cafeteria workers? Our wretched private healthcare system has turned us into a nation of spiteful and small-minded misanthropes.

It's true that the growing gap between public workers and private workers is a real problem. In the past, there was something of a tradeoff: public sector workers generally got paid less than private sector workers but made up for it with job security and benefits. Today, though, public workers generally get higher salaries and better benefits and more vacation and earlier retirement and more lucrative pension packages compared to comparable private sector workers. And private sector workers are understandably annoyed by this. But their annoyance would be better directed not at the lucky public sector workers, but at the mahogany row executives and conservative politicians who pretend that the only possible use for the mountains of cash generated by decades of economic growth is to give it all to mahogany row executives and the billionaires who contribute to conservative politicians."

Odessey? Wasn't she a minor character in an early Faulkner novel?

Out of the desert: Coming home from the war; Odessey begins

The story of the American experience in Iraq is evolving, from how the war should be fought to how it should end....
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel head and lead, 8/27/2007

For decades, now, copy editing has been one of the most persistent of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's many (since we're talking classics) fatal flaws. An Odyssey, by definition, can be a tragic tale (right so far) but it must be recounted from the moment of going out from one's home, to the return to that very place.

Crocker Stephenson--the author of today's piece-- is, perhaps, one of the MJS's better journalists. (Makes you wonder why he hasn't moved on.) Damn shame that putting his work in the hands of a summer intern on the copy desk makes it look banal.

Any genuine Iraq odyssey, as presented by the Journal Sentinel, would involve the beginnings, and that would mean dredging up the sludge produced by embedded scribbler, Kathy Skiba, in early 2003 when she donned desert camo and tripped lightheartedly off to war. And she sent back the vile crap that she later turned into a book...and a book tour. She should've been made to lend her fetid blend of bogus solemnity and banality to this "Home from the [porkchop] Hill" feature.

The stacks of that worthless, actively jingo, stinker of a book on remainder tables were monumental. When it continued to not sell, it made an "odessey" to the incinerator, where it just smoldered and gave off green fumes.

It hurts me to do this, but, here I am, actively happy to hear about book burning.

Just this once.

Just her book.

Fast rail, rapid transit, whatever you call it, consider the possibility you'll really like it when it arrives....

I grew up in a city that opened a light rail system in 1955. I was twelve years old and instantly mobile, able to travel to all different parts of the city of Cleveland, including the suburbs which had seemed remote and unapproachable to a kid from the near west side (the equivalent of, perhaps, KK and Oklahoma in Milwaukee).

I could be out at night during high school, certain that I could get home using a reliable transit system that ran a train every half hour until midnight.

And during the past three years, I have spent a total of about five months (in 2-week chunks) in Boston. The "T"--that transit system in the mythic folk song on which "the man who never returned" rode the rails--was pure pleasure. I had to get all over town and was continually amazed at the interesting variety of people with whom I would share the T on those trips. Students--both high school and younger, professionals, professors reading student papers as they rode, families, people in work clothes, people headed downtown to entertainment and restaurants, people with enough to drink in them that they'd be a menace on the highway, but were just sleepy people getting home legally and safely.

Getting from my sister's house in Brookline to Logan airport was pure $25 dollar anguish in a taxi, a snap--for a buck and a quarter--on the T, even (especially) at rush hour.

Many riders carried a book or newspaper they were reading. Women often carried their dressy shoes and wore the kind that allowed them to walk eight or ten blocks to a stop/station. There was always lots of conversation--not all in a familiar language.

Call me out-of-step for not liking the tedium of driving to Milwaukee alone in my car. I'd love to go there oftener if I didn't have to put up with the isolation, the tension of dealing with lane-changing, tailgating and bird-flipping fellow happy motorists. All followed by parking meters, after cruising to find one that's available.

You have to experience fast rail, probably have to have experienced it from an early age to appreciate its most civilized aspects.

We will have it, but not on reasonable terms. Once the easy and cheap availability of energy/ oil declines and happy motoring becomes impossibly costly for most people, we'll build it. But we won't grow into it. Many will see it as a comedown. Most will grind their teeth over all the money we threw away on mostly useless freeways as we pay again to get a system that will work.

I have a lovely niece, Rosalie, from Boston. She flew out to Wisconsin and Illinois for a few college visits, squired about by her crusty uncle.

She's beginning her senior year in September.

We had an itinerary that included Loyola, Northwestern and Lake Forest, the three of them laid out in a straight(ish) line along the Lake Michigan shore. Loyola was the first shock: $27 thousand for tuition, and another $9 thousand for room and board. That's bare bones. No bookstore, no travel, no cappuccino at Starbucks.

Whew. My whole education in the the early 60s totted up to the grand total of $1850./Yr. That was $7,400 for the sheepskin, including three roundtrips from Cleveland to Austin, Texas. These days it's hard to get out of the bookstore for eighteen fifty.

On the other hand....I worked for $1.375/hr in the A&P the two years before college--a job that gave me the honor of being a member of a union. I liked being in the RCIA (Retail Clerks International Association); our negotiators drew a line after my first year--no more increments discussed in terms of a dime, we were negotiating increases in eighths of a dollar. We settled a contract for dollar thirty-seven and a half, per hour; the company got what they wanted on work rules. Next time the contract expired, we shot for another eighth--back to round numbers at a buck fifty.

The point of this is to compare--then and now--the relative balance between wages and the cost of education: My four years of working paper routes, right up to my sixteenth birthday, earned me my private high school tuition ($135./yr), plus spending money and still left $600 savings in the parish credit union. The two years(actually 21 months) at the A&P, earned $1980. [How do I know? you ask. Everyone in entitled to get wage and SS contribution information from the Social Security Administration. If you're not getting this annually by mail from Social Security, request it now]

The upshot was that I was able, out of my own savings, to pay cash for most of my first two years of college. I was gonna be about eight hundred short each of the last two years. That was not impossible to handle. Parents to the rescue. And a loan from the parish credit union was there for the taking. Hell, I was good for it; they'd known me since I opened an account at age 11.

Getting a baccalaureate today involves high finance, big debts. Ratios of typical teen- and college-age wages(assuming 16 hrs a week) and cost of education are getting shockingly out of phase. For me in 1961 it was $22/wk--take-home wages and $1850/yr--cost of college.

Today a grocery clerk (comparable to my good union wage, for 16 hours) might take home $148/wk, while the cost of a year of comparable education (I checked the web page of my alma mater) is $29,000/yr including tuition, R&B, books and travel from the midwest to central Texas.

Wages have increased over the years such that a high school-age grocery clerk makes about 6.6 times as much as the same worker did in 1961 while education costs have multiplied by a factor of 15.6. It is now nigh impossible for a working class kid to put him/herself through college, in a typical four year stint, without shouldering a crushing load of debt.

I hope Rosalie gets some good scholarships. She's earned it: hard-working and--as her dad would put it-- wicked smaht.

But, whatever the assistance, it'll involve being in the hole--deep in a hole--at graduation time.

The masters of sprawl are hurting...

NEW YORK (Aug. 8) - Luxury home builder Toll Brothers Inc. said on Wednesday that it expected to report a decline in quarterly home-building revenue as the U.S. housing crisis deepened.

...snip...

Pending completion of an impairment analysis, Toll estimates its pretax write-down for operating communities, land and land options for the quarter at $125 million to $175 million.

Looking to indicators of future revenue results, Toll said net signed contracts were down 31 percent from a year earlier to $727.1 million.

The third-quarter cancellation rate was 23.8 percent compared with the prior quarter's rate of 18.9 percent.

Toll Brothers Builders specializes in building 5,000 sq.ft. chipboard-and-vinyl suburban palaces, mostly on the east coast. As anyone can plainly see, they are in the dumper, probably for good. The thing that seems to be killing them is "...operating communities, land and land options..." What this means is that--in anticipation of this sprawl boom continuing unabated, forever--they have put out huge amounts of money to buy up farmland and other exurban tracts, with plans to keep selling tract mansions to people with big dreams, skinny down payments and access to cheap cheap cheap mortgage money.

Now that one of every four "buyers"-- people who put down earnest money and told the Tolls to build 'em a house--have backed out during the last three month reporting period, the Tolls are carrying an unsustainable burden of debt. All that land, all those options they purchased on more land, all the half-finished subdivisions are killing them.

The ugly part is that these high rollers will escape with their personal fortunes intact, their kids' trust funds untouchable. Their employees and sub-contractors and suppliers are the ones that will live and die and bleed.

Their corporations and partnerships will go belly-up, but the masterminds will be able to slink off to Caribbean hideaways, while all the working people get stiffed.

But, why would Waterblogged give a rip about a bunch of suits named Toll, in Horsham, Pennsylvania? Waterblogged does NOT, truth to tell, give rip about them. But the clones of the Toll trolls who operate here in Waukesha County do worry him. And, they ought to worry all of us.

Working people: carpenters and masons and plumbers, rockers and landscapers, electricians and roofers, real estate agents--all the people who have put their faith in the housing boom are about to get hammered.

And it is Pabst Farms that is absolutely emblematic of what happens when the feckless clowns and greedy speculators who spin fantasy scenarios of Waukesha sprawl run up against reality.

Waterblogged is doing some close research on the Pabst Farms progress. Early indications are that the kind of results that Toll Brothers are reporting on the east coast are being duplicated here in Waukesha County.

Reminds me of the story of the world's most indolent chicken plucker...

A farmer hired an itinerant on the day of a chicken kill, assured by him that he could make those feathers fly.

So at dawn chicken heads rolled and feathers got plucked. The farmer checked in just before lunch on the progress:

"How many bald chickens we got?"

NY Times
BAGHDAD, July 15 — An American general directing a major part of the offensive aimed at securing Baghdad said Sunday that it would take until next spring for the operation to succeed, and that an early American withdrawal would clear the way for “the enemy to come back” to areas now being cleared of insurgents.

“It’s going to take us through the summer and fall to deny the enemy his sanctuaries” south of Baghdad, General Lynch said at a news briefing in the capital. “And then it’s going to take us through the first of the year and into the spring” to consolidate the gains now being made by the American offensive and to move enough Iraqi forces into the cleared areas to ensure that they remain so, he said.

Thus, sayeth the chicken plucker:

"Well, after I finish this one and two more, I'll have three"

* * * * * *

Back from Journey. A 4,000 mile driving trip with the Cuba Caravan

It all started last year.

I did what I'd been planning for almost five decades--went to Cuba. I traveled with Pastors for Peace.

Pastors for Peace is a project of the Interreligious Foundation for Community Organization, based in NYC (Harlem, actually), led by former Milwaukeean, the Rev. Lucius Walker. Lucius Walker founded Northcott Neighborhood House in the late 50s, got an MSW (Master of Social Work) at UWM in 1963, was a principal of the Triple O, a famously talented group that multiplied the effectiveness of many grass roots Civil Rights organizations by being the Organization of Organizations in Milwaukee during the 60s. And he did all this while serving a Baptist congregation and raising a young family in the city of Milwaukee.

Rev. Walker, at 75, is the liveliest, hardest-working, most focussed articulate and charismatic Community Organizer I ever hope to meet (and, hey, I once met Saul Alinsky). This year he is making his 67th trip to Cuba (18th with the Caravan, the rest with various groups and individually). Few Americans--and none in government--are as well prepared, connected and equipped to be the next Ambassador to Cuba, (once we get our relations with that nation under control, that is, out of the control of the American right wing) though one suspects that he would decline such an offer and continue to follow his pastoral calling.

Last year it was eleven days of peripatetic fund-raising through the midwest, followed by a conscious and public (right in the face of ICE, OFAC, Treasury, State and Homeland Security), dignified and respectful act of civil disobedience in going to Cuba with a hundred tons of humanitarian aid in the delightful company of a hundred fellow Americans, Danes, Scots, Brits, Germans, Mexicans and Canadians. We crossed the border at McAllen, Texas/Reynosa, Mexico, then left for Havana from Tampico International.

This year's route: Minneapolis, Duluth, Fargo, Sioux Falls, Rochester, Ames, Des Moines, Iowa City, Sterling Illinois, Columbia Missouri, Fayetteville and Dallas...

Here's a typical Caravan vehicle--a bus, loaded with medical supplies and equipment, carrying six caravanistas from Ontario, Pittsburgh and Bloomington IN--which will be driven to the port of Tampico, Mexico, loaded on a freighter by the volunteers from the Mexican Longshoremen's Union, bus and all, and shipped to Cuba.

Waterblogger's 13 year old pickup truck, my fellow-traveling caravanista from Germany, and our Iowa hosts on a stop at an Ames Iowa Organic farm.

The people of Rochester Minnesota, hosted the Caravan with a picnic potluck. Here, from the left: A Minnesota farmer who sells cattle and sheep in pairs to add genetic vigor and higher milk and meat production to the herds of several Cuban Farm Co-operatives; Sabine Caspar, a Caravanista from Hamburg Germany, making her tenth trip with Pastors for Peace; an amazing nun, who worked for years in Central America... and one of the drivers .

Home beckoned --the blogger had only two weeks to devote to the Caravan this year--after thirteen days on the road, so Waterblogged headed back from Texas as the rest headed to Cuba.

Next year in Havana.

Victor Davis Hanson, Hoover Institution, among the first on the far right to warn of the impending Peak Oil food/fuel crisis.

Victor Davis Hanson, writer of some astonishingly bombastic stuff, gives his regular readers the word on Peak Oil, the end of happy (cheap) motoring and the sour results of sprawl that is devouring agricultural land.

The Impending Food Fight
By Victor Davis Hanson
Thursday, June 28, 2007
While we worry about gas prices, the costs of milk, meat and fresh produce silently skyrockets. So like the end of cheap energy, is the era of cheap food also finally over?

Since the farm depression of the early 1980s - remember the first Farm Aid concert in 1985 - farmers have gone broke in droves from cheap commodity prices. The public shrugged, happy enough to get inexpensive food. Globalization saw increased world acreage planted and farmed under Western methods of efficient production. And that brought into the United States even more plentiful imported food.

Continued leaps in agricultural technology ensured more production per acre. The result was likewise predictable: the same old food surpluses and low prices. My late parents, who owned the farm I now live on in central California, used to sigh that the planet was reaching 6 billion mouths and so things someday "would have to turn around for farmers."

Now they apparently have. Food prices are climbing at rates approaching 10 percent per year. But why the sudden change?

There have been a number of relatively recent radical changes in the United States and the world that, taken together, provide the answer:

Modern high-tech farming is energy intensive. So recent huge price increases in diesel fuel and petroleum-based fertilizers and chemicals have been passed on to the consumer.

The U.S. population still increases while suburbanization continues. The sprawl of housing tracts, edge cities and shopping centers insidiously gobbles up prime farmland at the rate of hundreds of thousands of acres per year.

In turn, in the West periodic droughts and competition from growing suburbs have made water for farming scarcer, more expensive - and sometimes unavailable.

On the world scene, 2 billion Indians and Chinese are enjoying the greatest material improvement in their nations' histories - and their improved diets mean more food consumed than ever before.

The result is that global food supplies are also tightening up, both at home and abroad. America has become a net food importer. We seem to have developed a new refined taste for foreign wines, cheeses and fresh winter fruits even as we are consuming more of our corn, wheat, soybeans and dairy products at home.

Now comes the biofuels movement. For a variety of reasons, ranging from an attempt to become less dependent on foreign oil to a desire for cleaner fuels, millions of acres of farmland are being redirected to corn-based ethanol.

If hundreds of planned new ethanol refineries are built, the U.S. could very shortly be producing around 30 billion gallons of corn-based fuel per year, using one of every four acres planted to corn for fuel. This dilemma of food or fuel is also appearing elsewhere in the world as Europeans and South Americans begin redirecting food acreages to corn-, soy-, or sugar- based biofuels.Corn prices in America have spiked. And since corn is also a prime ingredient for animal feeds and sweeteners, prices likewise are rising for poultry, beef and everything from soft drinks to candy.

There is currently more corn acreage - about 90 million acres are predicted this year - than at any time in the nation's last half-century. But today's total farm acreage is either static or shrinking; land for biofuels is usually taken from wheat, soybeans or cotton, ensuring those supplies grow tight as well.

In the past, the genius of our farmers and the mind-boggling innovation of American agribusiness meant that farm production periodically doubled. Indeed, today we are producing far more food on far fewer acres than ever before.

But we are nearing the limits of further efficiency - especially when such past amazing leaps in production relied on once-cheap petro-chemicals, fuels and fertilizers.

As in the case of oil, we've gone through these sudden farm price spikes before. My grandfather once told me that in some 70 years of boom-and-bust farming he only made money during World Wars I and II, and the late 1960s.

But this latest round of high food prices seems coupled to energy shortages, and so won't go away anytime soon. That raises questions critical to the very security of this nation, which may have to import as many agricultural commodities as it does energy - and find a way to pay for both.

The American consumer lifestyle took off thanks to low-cost fuel and food. Once families could drive and eat cheaply, they had plenty of disposable income for housing and consumer goods.

But if they can't do either anymore, how angry will they get as they buy less and pay more for the very staples of life?

Victor Davis Hanson is at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and author, most recently, of "A War Like No Other: How the Athenians and Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War."

I'd have never thought this kind of clear-headed discourse was even possible coming out of Hanson. But, he's a gentleman farmer and a classicist on top of being at the farthest edge of the right-wing. Lots of reactionaries are reacting badly to this uncommonly thoughtful and readable column from one of their own going off the reservation.

See the whole article, with reader comments, at Townhall.com.

Waukesha Water Utility now will be held accountable for countless secret meetings.

Patrick Marley of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel posted this brief report today:

Madison - The state Supreme Court today overturned an 8-year-old appeals court ruling in saying that government bodies must spell out the business they will take up in [secret] meeting notices when they consider issues of broad public interest.

Today's ruling is the first time the high court has weighed in on the requirements of meeting notices. Under a 1999 appeals court decision, municipalities could list on notices simply that they were taking up licenses, rather than specifying what kind of licenses would be considered and for what businesses. Today's ruling reverses that.

The case stems from the Tomah School Board's 2004 approval of a contract with the teachers union. Brian L. Buswell sued the School District because he said the board did not notify the public for its June 1 and June 15, 2004, meetings that it would consider a controversial contract provision to give union members preference for hiring as coaches.

In the notice for its June 1 meeting, the School Board said it would consider employment negotiations in closed session. In the notice for its June 15 meeting, it said it would consider approving the teachers contract in open session but did not describe the provisions of the contract.

The Monroe County Circuit Court dismissed the case because of the 1999 appeals court decision that said governments had to provide only vague meeting notices. Buswell similarly lost on appeal and then asked the Supreme Court to take up the case.

The high court overruled the 1999 decision, saying governments must balance several factors in determining what to include in meeting notices. They must provide more information when they take up non-routine matters and must weigh the public's interest in an issue in determining how much information to put in notices, the court said.

In the Tomah case, the court said, the district needed to alert the public for both meetings that it was considering the teachers contract but that it did not have to say in the notice that the coaching provision was in the contract. The June 1 notice was insufficient but the June 15 notice was adequate, the court found.

In Waukesha, the Water Utility, as well as the City Council, have relied for decades on the advice and counsel of Waukesha's decidedly third-rate lawyer, City Attorney Curt Meitz.

Meitz gets elected time after time, largely because he doesn't have significant opposition. He's been a spectacular loser in court, having made two trips to the Supreme Court--once over attempts to shut down an adult bookstore and later over objections to EPA rules on Radium in our water. Both times he came back empty-handed. And the public paid for his poor performance, both in dollars and public perception of the quality of City Government.

It is unclear whether he just hasn't any talent, or whether he just doesn't know how to tell his constituents and elected officials that they don't have a case.

He achieved some semi-shocking notoriety decades back for having been accused of domestic violence; deferred prosecution was the disposition, in my recollection.

Many in City government roll their eyes and talk about Meitz's failures in the role of the City's chief legal officer, then complain that they are powerless do anything about the situation, since he is elected.

He has been approving notices of the Water Utility Commission's odious closed sessions (lots of them) and allowing the Commissioners to give short-hand explanations in the agendae: "Discuss Radium Issues" and "Water Supply Issues".

He will have to provide better legal advice and clearance of agenda item descriptions in the future.

Waukesha needs good advice from its City Attorney. The incumbent hasn't shown much talent, wisdom or finesse in his overly-long tenure. He ought to retire.

An even better idea would be to have an attorney who is hired by a panel of experts and elected officials (and subject to performance reviews), rather than an elected official in the position.

[Full Disclosure: City Attorney Meitz received some laughably inept and constitutionally abusive reports about your blogger, and the circumstances of his arrest a number of years ago. He insisted for weeks that he intended to prosecute me for the offense of "Obstructing an Officer" on the Night of Tuesday, October 30, 2000.

On that night, I was--with fifteen others, collectively the most mild-mannered and soft-spoken citizens imaginable, including a woman holding an infant, all of us guests at a private home near Cutler Park, on the front lawn, well behind the police line marked with yellow tape,--ordered by Waukesha's Keystone Kops, to get up on the porch because we were deemed to be a threat to the security of VP Al Gore and his running mate Joe Lieberman, who were campaigning for the White House. It little mattered that Gore and Company were in Chilton, Wisconsin at the time of the police demand. The actions of the police were clearly illegal and unconstitutional, regardless of where Gore was at the time.

I was standing on the bottom step of the crowded porch with Reuters photographer and long-time friend Al Fredricksen, wondering why I was doing what the cops had demanded. Al and I stepped off the porch, a deliberate challenge to their illegal orders. Two officious men-in-blue, whose principal difficulty as police officers seemed to be poor training and inept leaders, grabbed me, cuffed me and perp-walked me two blocks to a squad car, which then drove me one block to a "command post," at which was parked a bus for transporting the arrested to jail. From there off to the pokey.

The police had the good sense to not arrest a member of the working press with two cameras around his neck. That enabled Al to get it all down on film.

For a full five weeks, Meitz insisted that he had grounds to prosecute. I had a local attorney--fellow debate judge, and noble defender of First Amendment Rights, Bradley J. Bloch--who wrote a devilishly effective Motion to Dismiss that he filed at my plea hearing. Upon reading what he was up against, Meitz ran and hid, conceding that he had no case against me, dropping the charges.

Frosting on the cake: Police Chief Sharrock and Asst. Chief Dussault both apologized to Al Fredricksen and me in a meeting held in Mayor Lombardi's conference room. Said Sharrock: "My people should never have arrested you," adding that Meitz had assured them he had the goods and intended to prosecute".]

Beware of Exploding Mortgages

ANYONE who believes that the worst is over in the subprime mortgage fiasco need merely wait awhile. A tsunami of interest rate increases on these loans is headed your way....

During the next five years, some $1 trillion in adjustable-rate mortgages will reset. But in the here and now — from just June to October this year — more than $100 billion of that amount is scheduled to reset, and all of it is in loans that are in the riskier subprime category. Given the recent interest rate spike, many of those loans that once carried low teaser rates are on track to reset to at least 11 percent — or more than four percentage points higher than the current rate on a conventional, 30-year home loan.

Chances are slim that even the most creditworthy borrowers can survive payment shocks like these. And so, as the reset storm hits, delinquencies will rise and foreclosures will follow. It is too early to estimate how many foreclosures will take place as a result, but last year there were 1.2 million, according to RealtyTrac, an online real estate database.
By GRETCHEN MORGENSON
NY Times
Published: June 10, 2007

This will have repercussions from top to bottom of the real estate market.

There are significant numbers--though smaller than the percentage of subprimes about to reset--of adjustable rate mortgages in all segments of the housing market. The chaos that is coming in the low end will send shockwaves to every corner, every block, every subdivision, every condo development, every golf course dotted with tract mansions in Waukesha County.

WaterBlogged to MJS: Thanks, but no thanks.

A week ago, while shopping at Farm & Fleet in Waukesha (if they started selling meat and potatoes, fruit and vegetables I would consider that outfit a candidate for becoming the ONLY store I ever enter) I encountered a bright young fellow who worked hard to persuade me that becoming a paid subscriber to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel made sense. Our household pays $46.00/Mo. for The New York Times and appreciates the quality of the paper and the excellent home delivery, courtesy of an independent contractor who is virtually indentured to the Journal Sentinel, but gets to deliver other stuff, too.

But the young fellow persuaded me that the "paid subscriber" thing works to my advantage, as he was about to give me a $10 gift card usable at Farm & Fleet. The paper that comes from Milwaukee was proposing to pay me to be a subscriber. All I had to do was agree to a monthly credit card debit of $7 to cover daily and Sunday home delivery, for three months, to be offset by the upfront equivalent of a $10 credit I was getting. Moreover, I had the right to cancel at any time during the term. Looked like a fair-to-middlin' deal, though I could almost hear my dad saying "It isn't a bargain if you don't really need it".

Ooooh, hard to imagine that $11 out of my pocket is enough to cover the costs of producing and delivering 78 daily papers and 13 Sundays of product that would cost $58.50 retail (not delivered).

This morning the new newspaper arrived in a plastic bag, right next to the The Times, right in front of my door. The legendary New York paper weighed about half what came from Milwaukee. I opened both of them, began grazing.

Journalistic effort on the left. Commercial sludge on the right.

Journal Sentinel included about two pitchforkfuls of coated-stock, four color, perfumed, mostly tacky commercial stuffers. Divided into two stacks, the content--everything printed on newsprint, including classified, auto and real estate--was a lighter and shorter one than the sludge.

Next, I went to the Crossroads, to sample the best of Milwaukee ideas and opinion. The section has clearly become amateur hour. Least satisfying were three "Quick Hits...mini opinions...from the Journal Sentinel Editorial Board's Reader Advisory Committee, whose members are chosen annually".

All three failed to communicate much. One of the writers ranted about how

"President Bush quietly accepts his adversaries waging a campaign of verbal assaults against him, which is bound to result in low approval ratings from the American people. Some Americans are distressed by this administration that endures abuse by Democrats just to “get along.” Americans don’t want to “get along” with people who are wrong.

I'd want to know more about this adviser's advice to the editorial board, but, then, I could get that from listening to the Sykes and Belling shows.

A second, by a retired UWM professor, reveals that TIF Districts are subject to abuse and need to be watched. This is pretty worked-over stuff, common knowledge even among the middle school set, something that isn't going to change based on one tired prof's recommendation.

Finally, Mai Xiong, a third "quick hit" adviser, goes deep into the interplay of Hmong-Americans, a heroic (or cruel and murderous, depending on one's point of view or tribal affiliation) military General Officer, the Laotian government, a war that started three or four generations back, and the U.S. government. There's plenty of evidence in six sentences that there is some deep hatred and unhealthy licking of wounds underlying this opinion. But, there's no context, no background, no way of evaluating the statements. Hit 'n' run.

I called and canceled. They will properly charge me the $5 bucks the Farm & Fleet card is worth.

Thanks, Pop, I'll try to stay tuned to your sterling advice: "It's no bargain, if you don't have any use for it".

What's with that thing behind his head?

As I was reading the Rick Esenberg blog, struggling to keep the blogger from taking possession of my brain and forging the mushy lump into a leg-hold trap, my attention kept getting drawn to the portrait of himself he has provided.

The guy has a halo.

Look at it. That's a genuine, unambiguous, beatific, perfectly-formed, other-worldly, stairway-to-heaven halo. The quintessence of what Mark Twain observed and named: "...the calm confidence of a christian with four Aces".

Flectamus genua.

OK, Just kidding; Levate...Levate...Levate.

Which sent me off on a web chase to learn a bit about halos. They seem to have gone out of style in post Vatican II catholicism. I don't believe they were ever such a big thing with those who took a different tack after the Reformation.

They do seem to have cracked the world of comic book culture. Spidey--since that bite from a magical/mischievous arachnid--gets a case of the tingles and a halo every time he senses danger.



And Che, who displaced FDR as the most visible secular saint of the 20th Century, (and still cookin' in the 21st) has a halo treatment nearly identical to Rick's.
As Aretha put it: "Who's Zoomin' Who?" here.



To get to the real source of halo knowledge, we need to get back further even than the most persistently aggravating advertising jingle of the 1950s: Halo everybody, Halo. Halo is the shampoo that glorifies you hair. So, Halo, everybody, Halo.

We have to trudge all the way back to St. Denis, first Bishop of Paris, who was beheaded around the year 250 CE. As anyone can plainly see, Denis is the quintessence of a christian holding four big one-spots (with a bug-eyed joker up each sleeve) and a heaven-sent exemption from the need for dry cleaning.

Denis has two halos. One for his noggin--which someone just handed him--and another for the stump from which it was so recently and cleanly cloven.

So, There.

This is a bit of a departure from my usual blog preoccupations-- 1. Waukesha's Water Problems, 2. Sprawl 3. Yin and Yang.

What it actually has been is a two day learn-by-doing exercise in how to marry graphics and text in Blogger.

I think I got it down. But at what price?  "Knowledge maketh a bloody entrance".

Does anyone out there have the actual provenance of this most quotable of Shakespearean-quotes-not-by -Shakespeare?

Please, somebody out there, tutor me in linking? In the best of all possible blogworlds, I'd have been able to make the words "Rick Esenberg's blog" in the first sentence show up bright blue, so you could link to that blog and make sense of the reference to mush-for-brains and spring steel, also in the lead paragraph.

I'm in need of a good reference to how to do linkin' in Blogger. Can't understand the directions that came with the package. I'm told there is a "... for Dummies" book out there. But I refuse to descend to the level of self-abasement involved in buying anything from that series.

It's starting to pinch for those owning raw land they intended to turn into tract mansions

For sale. Not lots. Raw land.

Top picture is Hwy E in North Prairie. Stone's throw from the broad and depressingly empty vistas of Broadlands, a golf course development with too few golfers and too few buyers for oversized/overpriced houses.

Bottom photo is three miles west of Waukesha City limits on Hwy 18, at the Intersection of Brandy Brook Road. A stone's throw from the green and depressingly empty vistas of Brandy Brook, a golf course subdivision, with too few golfers and too few buyers of oversized/overpriced houses.

Ah, the sweet smell of farmland about to return to being just that...farmland.

Won't be needing any Lake Michigan water out here.

Trust and Betrayal

"In this place where valor sleeps, we are reminded why America has always gone to war reluctantly, because we know the costs of war."

That’s what President Bush said last year, in a Memorial Day ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery.

Those were fine words, spoken by a man with less right to say them than any president in our nation’s history. For Mr. Bush took us to war not with reluctance, but with unseemly eagerness.

PAUL KRUGMAN
Memorial Day, 2007

Summer reading about the very hot Summer of 1787

An astonishing amount of what passes for political discussion these days --from congressional debate to political campaigns-- is shot through with ringing anthems of America-as-christian-nation.

I'm reading The Summer of 1787 by David Stewart, published this month. He's done an admirable job of tracing the trajectory of the debate that forged the Constitution out of the frustration and manipulation that flowed from the original thirteen constituents imperfectly bound together under the Articles of Confederation. It was a long, hot summer in Philadelphia, four months of tortuous work.

There was compromise, obstruction, boycott of the Convention, compromise, more fighting followed by more compromise and, ultimately, the Original Sin of our Constitutional Democracy, the door left wide open to that utterly un-christian, abjectly immoral institution of slavery.

He lays out the passions and contradictions that led to our imperfect and flawed, yet brilliant and enduring founding document.

The book is short, but steeped in the original documentation--letters among the framers, complementing the meticulous (and occasionally manipulative) keeping of the minutes by James Madison.

What is striking--and germane to dialogue in a 21st Century blog--is how totally the framers left religion, God, Christian morality, their own religious beliefs out of the discussion. They clearly had no time for it. It was irrelevant. One need only read the brief chapter on the Three Fifths Compromise to know that these were pragmatic men, focused only on the things of this world, perhaps ignoring the compartmentalized issue of religious belief, particularly as it impinged on the unholy parts of the bargain they were agreeing to.

They were single-minded in their pursuit of a scheme for a constitutional republic that would rid them of monarchy--that stinking notion that there exists a Divine Right of Kings. That, and the manipulative and thuggish theocracy flowing from it--the monarch supported by nobility and catered to by the ecclesiastical princes.

Reading Stewart's history brought me back to the essence of it all. If the framers had not compromised, there would have been no republic, no constitution, no reason to be arguing 220 years later over whether the this odd bunch of deists, methodists, unitarians, quakers, atheists and Don't-Give-a-Damn's believed in God, much less thought that belief in god, much less christian morality, was the foundation of the American experiment.

Predictably, the Original Sin has never been expiated; it still marks every one of us. It still threatens this flawed-but-enduring, presently-limping Constitutional Democracy. It will likely be the end of it. (In case anyone's been thinking America is, of its very nature, millennial).

And arguments about how one or the other of us knows for sure that the founders were devout and god-fearing and fundamentally christian is just so much chaff in the wind.

Don't shoot, GOP-Men. I surrender.

Democrats Drop Troop Pullout Dates From Iraq Bill
By CARL HULSE 4:10 PM ET
The New York Times

The move was a wrenching reversal for some Democrats, who saw their election triumph as a call to force an end to the war....

As a lifelong pacifist and conscientious objector, I honor the courage, probity and moral excellence of these two men.

It's Our Cage, Too
Torture Betrays Us and Breeds New Enemies

By Charles C. Krulak and Joseph P. Hoar
The Washington Post;
Thursday, May 17, 2007

Fear can be a strong motivator. It led Franklin Roosevelt to intern tens of thousands of innocent U.S. citizens during World War II; it led to Joseph McCarthy's witch hunt, which ruined the lives of hundreds of Americans. And it led the United States to adopt a policy at the highest levels that condoned and even authorized torture of prisoners in our custody.

Fear is the justification offered for this policy by former CIA director George Tenet as he promotes his new book. Tenet oversaw the secret CIA interrogation program in which torture techniques euphemistically called "waterboarding," "sensory deprivation," "sleep deprivation" and "stress positions" -- conduct we used to call war crimes -- were used. In defending these abuses, Tenet revealed: "Everybody forgets one central context of what we lived through: the palpable fear that we felt on the basis of the fact that there was so much we did not know."

We have served in combat; we understand the reality of fear and the havoc it can wreak if left unchecked or fostered. Fear breeds panic, and it can lead people and nations to act in ways inconsistent with their character.

The American people are understandably fearful about another attack like the one we sustained on Sept. 11, 2001. But it is the duty of the commander in chief to lead the country away from the grip of fear, not into its grasp. Regrettably, at Tuesday night's presidential debate in South Carolina, several Republican candidates revealed a stunning failure to understand this most basic obligation. Indeed, among the candidates, only John McCain demonstrated that he understands the close connection between our security and our values as a nation.

Tenet insists that the CIA program disrupted terrorist plots and saved lives. It is difficult to refute this claim -- not because it is self-evidently true, but because any evidence that might support it remains classified and unknown to all but those who defend the program.

These assertions that "torture works" may reassure a fearful public, but it is a false security. We don't know what's been gained through this fear-driven program. But we do know the consequences.

As has happened with every other nation that has tried to engage in a little bit of torture -- only for the toughest cases, only when nothing else works -- the abuse spread like wildfire, and every captured prisoner became the key to defusing a potential ticking time bomb. Our soldiers in Iraq confront real "ticking time bomb" situations every day, in the form of improvised explosive devices, and any degree of "flexibility" about torture at the top drops down the chain of command like a stone -- the rare exception fast becoming the rule.

To understand the impact this has had on the ground, look at the military's mental health assessment report released earlier this month. The study shows a disturbing level of tolerance for abuse of prisoners in some situations. This underscores what we know as military professionals: Complex situational ethics cannot be applied during the stress of combat. The rules must be firm and absolute; if torture is broached as a possibility, it will become a reality.

This has had disastrous consequences. Revelations of abuse feed what the Army's new counterinsurgency manual, which was drafted under the command of Gen. David Petraeus, calls the "recuperative power" of the terrorist enemy.

Former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld once wondered aloud whether we were creating more terrorists than we were killing. In counterinsurgency doctrine, that is precisely the right question. Victory in this kind of war comes when the enemy loses legitimacy in the society from which it seeks recruits and thus loses its "recuperative power."

The torture methods that Tenet defends have nurtured the recuperative power of the enemy. This war will be won or lost not on the battlefield but in the minds of potential supporters who have not yet thrown in their lot with the enemy. If we forfeit our values by signaling that they are negotiable in situations of grave or imminent danger, we drive those undecideds into the arms of the enemy. This way lies defeat, and we are well down the road to it.

This is not just a lesson for history. Right now, White House lawyers are working up new rules that will govern what CIA interrogators can do to prisoners in secret. Those rules will set the standard not only for the CIA but also for what kind of treatment captured American soldiers can expect from their captors, now and in future wars. Before the president once again approves a policy of official cruelty, he should reflect on that.

It is time for us to remember who we are and approach this enemy with energy, judgment and confidence that we will prevail. That is the path to security, and back to ourselves.


Charles C. Krulak was commandant of the Marine Corps from 1995 to 1999. Joseph P. Hoar was commander in chief of U.S. Central Command from 1991 to 1994.

* * *

Should this pacifist/blogger ever have the distinct privilege of meeting these two men, he will snap a respectful salute.

Be assured, Mr. Moore, the last thing in the world they intend to do is impose a fine on you.

May 10, 6:26 AM EDT

By DAVID GERMAIN
AP Movie Writer

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Academy Award-winning filmmaker Michael Moore is under investigation by the U.S. Treasury Department for taking ailing Sept. 11 rescue workers to Cuba for a segment in his upcoming health-care documentary "Sicko," The Associated Press has learned.

The investigation provides another contentious lead-in for a provocative film by Moore, a fierce critic of President Bush. In the past, Moore's adversaries have fanned publicity that helped the filmmaker create a new brand of opinionated blockbuster documentary.

"Sicko" promises to take the health-care industry to task the way Moore confronted America's passion for guns in "Bowling for Columbine" and skewered Bush over his handling of Sept. 11 in "Fahrenheit 9/11."

The Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control notified Moore in a letter dated May 2 that it was conducting a civil investigation for possible violations of the U.S. trade embargo restricting travel to Cuba. A copy of the letter was obtained Tuesday by the AP.

"This office has no record that a specific license was issued authorizing you to engage in travel-related transactions involving Cuba," Dale Thompson, OFAC chief of general investigations and field operations, wrote in the letter to Moore.

I got one of those letters last summer, after a similar, allegedly illegal trip to Cuba. They'll threaten you with a variety of penalties. They'll have to offer you an appeal of the finding and the penalty before an Administrative Law Judge.

You will want to lose this appeal, if it is ever heard. OFAC, by the way, has no Administrative Law Judges. But, if you get the chance, that's exactly what you want to happen: losing the appeal will push the issue to the next level. And then, just before imposing the forfeiture, they'll send a final statement that it is going to happen. Look out, Mike, the full wrath of the Treasury Department is about to come down on your head....

BUT....

There will be a notice at the bottom of the last letter, mentioning that you are entitled to appeal the finding and the penalty to the Federal Courts.

Sweet words, those: The Federal Courts.

The very last thing in the world the US Government wants is to have the Embargo and the Travel Ban challenged in the Federal courts.

That's why they've never enforced a finding and forfeiture. (They do, often, threaten/bargain with people who go to Cuba for the sun and the Bonefish, and induce them to pay a reduced fine). These are folks who did not think they would get caught, who do not want the publicity, just want the Treasury to get off their backs.

You apparently made the trip in conscious defiance of an unconstitutional set of laws. And, unless you really jab them in the eye with this little instance of civil disobedience and force their hand, you can be sure that they will just let this go away.

Oh, what the hell, Mike; jab 'em in the eye. As if you needed encouragement.

I'm no lawyer. But, I know that there are platoons of Constitutional lawyers licking their chops in anticipation of a chance to take the case. This law, OFAC and the travel ban are pretty obviously unconstitutional. I would bet that even Scalia and Thomas would have to go along with declaring it forever dead. Treasury and OFAC keep it alive by never letting anyone get to the point at which they have standing to challenge it.

Welcome to the party. (Click to enlarge)

The Tallgrass - Westowne Water Tower Controversy

Last month an issue--the building of a new Waukesha water tower in the area surrounding the UWW campus--boiled into a short-lived, but intense, controversy.

There are two subdivisions in the University area on the northwest side of Waukesha: one abuts the eastern edge of campus, the other hugs the western edge. Westowne (to the east) comprises about four hundred fifty lots (small, with typical dimensions of 50 ft X 125 ft, just east of the campus. It's a working class neighborhood, has been there since 1924. [full disclosure: I live in Westowne, have for 16 years; and I love it.] Not so long ago it was out-in-the-country, beyond the western boundary of the City of Waukesha. Now it is viewed as inner-city.

In another world entirely is the Siepmann-developed Tallgrass experience. It was platted and offered for sale in 1995--and almost immediately built-out--following a pattern that had been quite successful, both economically and esthetically, for Siepmann in the 70s when the nearby Pebble Valley was developed. Siepmann's idea has been to place residences on relatively small parcels, but provide an extensive meandering greensward of unifying common space.

Tallgrass, by comparison, has seemed like too much of a good thing. The houses are gigantic, averaging almost double the size of those in Pebble Valley. Tallgrass is out-of-scale. The tract mansions seem crowded; trees will take many decades to grow to a size proportionate with the dwellings. Pebble Valley, in contrast, has matured nicely. Its neighborhoods are appealing and much desired by conservative homebuyers.

Because of all the burgeoning subdivisions--Tallgrass for one--being annexed to the City, water pressure in the northwest pressure zone has been deemed insufficient. There has been, since 1991, on the boundary between UWW and Tallgrass (and the cornfield that preceded Tallgrass), a 65 ft standpipe (a type of comparatively short, squat water tower that resembles a silo rather than a mushroom). It was there, on high ground, looming over several properties in Tallgrass from the beginning. Most in Tallgrass couldn't see the standpipe; those lots that were close were said to have sold last and at a discount.

But the replacement tower is to be huge, over a hundred feet tall, with the bulk of the water storage in the upper half of a more typical balloon-on-a-stick water tower. It is going to be visible from most of the houses in Tallgrass.

The Tallgrassers (at least some of them) weren't happy. They pouted. They did a lot of homework and came forward with a lengthy and detailed jeremiad backed up by sixteen pages of topographical, geological, aerial photographical, economical, taxical and obtusely analytical argumentation. It was all very reminiscent of the famous Officer Obie report: "...twenty seven color, glossy photographs, with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one," the backbone of his airtight case against Arlo and the gang from Alice's Restaurant.

Their demand: Move that water tower over to the edge of that working class subdivision.

And why? We pay more taxes than they do.

Here's the page from their proposal with the rationale.


(reader: kindly forgive the inability of this blogger to get an inserted page up to readable size. The highlighted line is: "Tallgrass Subdivision Seemingly Pays nearly 2 1/2 times more taxes than University Meadows"

It is a corrosive and particularly ugly assertion.

We have by virtue of the size and location and valuation of our residences an a priori entitlement to extra consideration, preferential treatment, extraordinary deference.

Where do these people get such distorted notions?

Well, recently, they've come from members of the Waukesha City Council:

Alderman James Connors, October, 2005: "A lot of my constituents have assessments of over $360 thousand and they don't think they are getting their money's worth."

Connors, again, in October 2006: "My constituents are paying more than their fair share."

Alderman Rick Tortomasi, December 19, 2006, in a Waukesha Freeman guest opinion: "The west side is expanding even further west with the addition of of hundreds of new homes well above the Medium [sic] -priced home in this city. That means they are taxed higher than the average city taxpayer."

This attitude and belief is corroding a fundamental understanding.

The owner of each home in Waukesha pays at exactly the same rate of taxation.

Eighteen and seven hundred seventy seven thousand, eight hundred sixty seven millionths of a dollar/per thousand dollars of assessed valuation. $18.77 per thousand, for short. (Honest, look at a tax bill. The tax rate is precisely computed to six decimal places). Each of us has his or her own multiplier--the value of our property. Anyone who doesn't like the size of the multiplier is in complete control of that variable.

If you cannot afford the taxes, you've got too much house. Don't moan about how some--at the high end--are taxed higher than the rest, or that they are paying more than a fair share. And, if you're a politician, don't encourage that kind of thinking.

Note : My wife, my children, and I know a number families and individuals who live in Tallgrass. Wonderful, decent, modest, generous people. It is clear that not every one of the residents of that nearby neighborhood stood behind (or even knew about) the statements made by the vocal group. Doubly a shame, because they may get tarred with the same brush. But not by me--A special thank you to those Tallgrass residents who apologized for the ugliness of the whiners.

Waukesha Water Utility pushes "aggressive" (their word) conservation pricing plan. It is a lightweight, lackluster attempt.

The monthly meeting of the Waukesha Water Utility was held this afternoon.

News: Tortomasi is out. Bull is in. Rick Tortomasi was appointed as Common Council member, less than a year ago. It made little sense to put him on the Utility Commission a year ago, as he had just been elected, didn't know his way around. Nelson also put him on the Finance Committee, as a greenhorn. He was clearly in way over his head. No word on why he's out. So, a year of orientation is wasted.

Peggy Bull--appointed Alderman a year ago, ran for her seat unopposed last month--is the newest greenhorn alderman, who will need months to get up to speed. Probably for the best, though. Tortomasi contributed little. Bull is bright and in touch with the broad issues.

"Seldom-seen" Commissioner, Gerald Couri was absent AGAIN. Mayor also absent, so a quorum of three did business.

In the midst of a long list of routine approvals of contracts and consultants came the unveiling of the "ascending block" pricing of water to residential customers.

In the past in Waukesha, and universally throughout Wisconsin, water utilities have had "descending block" pricing schemes. Under pressure to demonstrate aggressive conservation measures as a condition of tapping Lake Michigan water, the Utility has turned the system on its head. Presently, customers pay $1.69 per thousand gallons of water--up to 75 thousand. Gallons used beyond 75K cost $1.46 per thousand gallons. The price keeps descending in blocks, thus the name. The more you use, the cheaper it gets. Not exactly a formula for conservation.

It is not actually a new idea; this blogger--long before the word "blog" was in the vocabulary--urged the Commission to go to an effective ascending block pricing scheme. What the Commision is backing is a weak attempt, weak to the point of being little more than symbolic.

Peggy Steeno, the Commission's Administrative Services Manager--an accountant with an extremely sharp pencil and a refreshing air of competence--is often the only one in the room willing to cut through the BS. After outlining the new pricing scheme:


First 30,000 Gal. --- $1.69 per thousand gallons
Next 10,000 Gal. --- $1.92 per thousand gallons
Over 40,000 Gal. --- $2.24 per thousand gallons

She announced the actual effect on customers. Words to the effect that "This will only apply to people for whom it doesn't matter". What's the problem? Hardly anyone among the utility customers gets into the second block. They have the brackets all wrong. Good concept, bad execution.

All that straining to present this scheme as revolutionary (My pop, God rest him, a lefty to his core, always warned me to be wary of suburbanites announcing that they are in the vanguard of this-or-that revolution) and they have produced a weak-kneed Potemkin Village of a plan. It has been crafted to have minimum effect on the water usage behavior of the customers and to keep revenues up. The current rate case (including this bogus ascending block element) before the Public Service Commission wants an increase of 17%.

And they already have projected another rate increase of 17% in January, 2009--19 months away.

Henry, why are you here...? Waldo, why are you not here?

This exchange of e-mail with my son in Bangkok (a recent graduate, working an internship in Thailand) is an attempt to fulfill an obligation incumbent on all civil disobedients--public declaration and acknowledgement of consequences.

On 4/13/07, Jim Bouman wrote: [from Waukesha]
It is 6:45 Friday evening here, a really nice day. We'll grill some chicken in a little while, then watch a movie.

Mom and I talked something over and made a decision. We'll probably owe about $6,000 (in four quarterly chunks) in federal taxes on the 16th of April [see April 17 update below]. We are going to send in the tax form with that number on the bottom line.

We will be sending a letter instead of a check, explaining that we refuse to pay this first installment. If they want it, they'll be doing what they did the last time we did this--in the 1970s. They came and took my check, our savings, mom's check. One day they even came to the house on Madison Street and threatened to impound our car to cover the taxes and penalties we had incurred. Those were the days.

And we're back to doing it. This war is so ugly. It is a crime committed by this generation, that will be hung on you and your children to pay for.

I'll start the grill now. Talk to you soon. Sunday early would be a good to time to Skype.

Dad


On 4/14/07, jesse bouman wrote: [from Bangkok]
I don't understand what withholding taxes actually does. Does it make you feel better, that you are doing something against the war? Is it productive in any way? Are there any real benefits that come from this decision? I don't see the benefits outweighing the costs and I think there are more practical ways to voicing your opinion. You are living in an age where technology gives anyone the ability to voice their opinion. You have a blog, use it. National publications quote blogs as sources now; you know this. Something like [blogging] can incite actual change. I don't agree with withholding taxes....

It's your life, your money, and your decision.

Jesse


On April 15, Jim Bouman wrote [from Waukesha]:
Thoreau called it: "...the Duty of Civil Disobedience".

Thoreau objected, to the very core of his being, to the Mexican War--perhaps the most unjust war in earlier American history)--in 1847. There were a number of taxes citizen Thoreau was obligated to pay, including a poll tax, road tax and others, but no income tax. Refusal to pay the poll tax carried more weight than mere words. To be sure and he and others had written and spoken many words on the Mexican War--all to little effect in ending it. He went to jail for that refusal. While he was in jail, his friend Ralph Waldo Emerson came to visit and said: "Henry, why are you here?". To which Thoreau responded: "Waldo, why are you not here?".

Refusing to pay a portion of taxes that are specifically required for carrying out war was his--and now my--way of speaking with greater force and urgency.

One cannot be a tax evader--one who tries to get away with non-payment of taxes. The refusal must be public, intentional, principled, carefully-thought-out, and with the aim of stopping something that has not been stoppable by the ordinary constitutionally-protected means --public statements, organizing, working together in groups, blogging.

This war has now gone on for 49 months. The cost in lives and treasure and suffering is beyond imagining for most of us. More than 650,000 Iraqi lives (the vast majority of them civilian non-combatants), more than $416 billion, four million refugees, 3,300 American lives. And the President is arguing that his Iraq project needs $92 billion more, right now, and demanding that Congress appropriate that money right now.

And these April 16 taxes we intend to refuse to pay are to be part of that wad that will be spent. Sending in the money is assent; it says that we are doing our part

We pay--cheerfully--for Head Start and cops and streetlights and Universities and research and foreign aid, and school bands and orchestras--most everything else that is governmental. And since 1975 we have always paid, cheerfully, on-time, all the taxes we owed, Federal State and Local.

And we always, always vote.

At this moment, though, we think that these things are not enough.

We are going to do it publicly; we'll be urging others to do it, as well (punishable as conspiracy). And, perhaps, like a snowball rolling down hill, it will gather the weight and mass necessary to become a roadblock to more of this war, more of any war.

A story: In 1970, mom and I joined the war tax resistance and refused to pay a portion of income tax, as well as a little-known excise tax that had been identified as being specifically necessary to pay for war. It was the 10% telephone excise tax on long distance phone service. Eventually about 50 thousand Americans began refusing each month to pay this phone tax. The way we did it was to send in payment for phone service to the phone company and deduct the 28 cents or 41 cents (some piddling amount) that was listed as Fed. Tax. The phone company simply reported to the IRS that the customer had refused the tax. Didn't hurt Ma Bell. The phone companies, in fact, hated being the unwilling tax collector.

People laughed at this ineffectual, chickenshit, approach to bringing the war machine to a halt. Johnson, then Nixon, just kept on escalating the Vietnam War, despite growing revulsion toward what we were doing in that far-off country.

But the kicker: years after Nixon was gone--resigned in disgrace for other war-related criminal activity, (it wasn't the crime, it was the cover-up) his White House/Oval Office taping system that had secretly recorded years of presidential conversations was released, a few tapes at a time, by the National Archives.

There, in the Oval Office, at just the moment he was preoccupied with the heat coming down and impending impeachment, Nixon is heard complaining loud and bitterly to Haldemann to "Get something done about those damned telephone tax protesters".

Drip, drip, drip. Twenty eight cents a month multiplied by 50 thousand. It clearly got under the skin of the guy--sleazy, lowlife, quack-Quaker that he was--we were sending a message to.

Dad


Update: Our extremely competent and and conscientious tax accountant informs us that we actually overpaid 2006 taxes by about $3000--a combination of lack of coordination between quarterly estimated tax payments and withholding on withdrawals from IRAs.

I'm torn beween "Drat!" and "Cool"! The refusal will have to wait until July estimated payment is due (drat). The unexpected refund will go to paying off the school debts of our two--a recent graduate (that's you) and a soon-to-graduate (that's Daisy).

Waukesha's Magic Number.

It is quite the interesting number—referred to often in Waukesha City Council discussion and in news reports of developers approaching the Waukesha Plan Commission. Don’t look for it in the ordinances; it’s more like a principle, a benchmark, a little nugget of conventional wisdom.

Here it is: A new single-family dwelling in a new subdivision shall, ideally, carry a $360 thousand sale price/assessed value, in order to be worth Waukesha’s while.

Jim Payne, City Administrator, did the number crunching several years ago, and asserts--even today-- that this number is right-on-the-money. It is what's needed to produce enough tax revenue for the city of Waukesha to stay solvent and expand services to meet the increase in population.

It is clearly not hard-and-fast; some budget tract mansions (lacking granite countertops) are going for less—but not much less. Moreover, when the rare proposal for low-and-moderate income housing comes up, those houses have to be, by definition, in the range of $190 thousand to $200 thousand.

But, the pressure is there--get all the new stuff to average upwards of a third of a million bucks. Otherwise, the city will not be able to maintain the same level of services to existing residents, as well as the new ones.

How much does it take every month to pay for a house-and-yard that’s priced at $360,000?
The newspapers and the internet are full of teaser ads. . . Mortgage Rates Near 40-Yr Lows $310K loan for under $999/mo. . . . that make one think it isn’t really so much. Read ‘em (and weep over) the fine print. Here’s what I worked out with an old fashioned mortgage guy. He says a prudent person (the only kind he’d make a loan to) with a 20% ($72 thousand) down payment can get a mortgage of $288 thousand, with a fixed interest rate of 6%, for 30 years.

The monthly payment would be:

Principal and Interest $1775
Taxes $540
Insurance $85
Total $2,400 / month

That’s a big nut to crack every month. And it raises a question: what kind of family income does it take to shoulder a monthly obligation of $2400 every-single-month, for the next thirty years? Assuming the normal expenses of suburban lifestyle, plus furniture, kids, existing debt, savings for retirement, heat and electric, kids, college loans, a couple of cars and a Harley, not to mention kids, a prudent lender wants to see $105 thousand-a-year in income.

To those who have that much down payment and that much income, I say mopar to ya. I encourage you to settle in Waukesha, in a house, priced at $360 K. If you manage to just barely meet the criteria, prepare to eat macaroni and cheese every night in house with no furniture.

To those who don’t meet the income standard (or cannot count on maintaining it) I’d suggest trying to live well, but not that well…. Don’t go after a starter manse that costs upwards of a third of a million. If you, the potential buyer, lack a substantial down payment; if you need an Adjustable Rate Mortgage to get payments you can handle; if you are counting on your house as an investment that’ll appreciate thirty percent every four years, or--and this is the big one--if you cannot afford the taxes on a $360 thousand residence (which will, of course, go up 30% if your hopes about appreciation turn out to be realistic), don’t even go to the open house, don’t burn little candles of desire for this kind of over-hyped and over-priced subdivision lifestyle.

This codger, who has lived in two houses in Waukesha over a span of almost thirty five years, who raised two kids in a really fine working-class neighborhood where they could walk (not that they always did) to elementary, middle and high school, plus two years of University of Wisconsin, will not have to listen to whining from those who have chosen to get in over their heads--but think the problem is the taxes. The problem is with the choice made, or about to be made—to get in over your head.

If you cannot afford the taxes on a $360 thousand house, you cannot afford the house.
Finally, this isn’t an argument for retaining the property tax, as is. I believe schools should be funded by income tax, rather than property tax. But, city and county government and services will remain forever supported by the property tax; and the amount paid will always be tied to the assessed value of each citizen’s real estate.

And, what does all of this have to do with water?
Quite a bit, actually. We have enough water for now, and enough for a conservative future. We do need to conserve it. It's the CONSERVATIVE thing to do. We might do well to recognize that continued uncontrolled growth of the city through annexation will produce a situation in which we do not have sufficient water from our only available source--deep wells and shallow wells.

Cutting back on development and annexation is the sensible choice. Pursuing an incredibly expensive and decidedly iffy path like trying to get expensive Lake Michigan water pumped to Waukesha (and then back to the lake) is not the choice of the homeowner who is concerned that the taxes are too high in Waukesha.

The Wall of Pain

"The crimes in Chinatown include incest and murder, but the biggest crime is against the city's own future, by men who see that to control the water is to control the wealth." Roger Ebert, 1974

This blog may have a title that focuses on water, but, as in the 1974 Oscar-winning film (Eleven nominations, just one statue, in the year of Godfather II) starring Jack Nicholson, Faye Dunaway and John Huston, the thing that underlies all of the action is people who buy land cheap by manipulating water, and sell it dear after they've induced the taxpayers/government to assure an endless water supply.

Waukesha's no Chinatown, but it has a cast of analogous characters: Wm. Huelsman, Bryce Styza, The Bielinski brothers, and a host of smaller fry. I'm not even remotely suggesting these big players do anything untoward. In fact, they are deemed locally to be the leading edge, the engine of growth, the facilitators of much-needed tax revenue. I'm merely noting the way they operate, the way they spin fantasies of upscale, exclusive (exclusive: Is this a word with a few ugly overtones?) residential communities that induce people to move to a contorted version of the good life in ever-more-remote subdivisions.

Places of anomie and alienation where parenting is synonymous with chauffeuring, where kids never go to the park, because mom and dad have a park-like lot. Places where you'd like to be friends with your neighbors, but you know they'll talk behind your back if you have dandelions. Places ever more dependent on the availability of cheap petroleum, ever more likely to foreclose what's left of the agriculture--the culture part--and the farmland we are going to need in the future.

There's always been a lot of money to be made, but developing hasn't always been easy for developers.
When I first came to Milwaukee in 1966, the air was full of shock and gossip and derisive commentary about the spectacular fall from the pinnacle of hubris by Francis Jay Schroedel and his doomed Rainbow Springs development out near Eagle. In the late fifties, early sixties, when he was cooking it up, SE Wisconsin was still in the planning and early construction phase of I-94 to Madison. The farmers way out there still had fairly prosperous dairy operations; they wondered what was going on in this developer's head. And there were few, if any, commuters.

Schroedel got himself pretty far out on a very fragile limb. Mercifully, Schroedel's name is still attached to his successes; few know that the post-war wunderkind of the cradles of the baby boom was the same guy whose big dream is still a nightmare fifty years later.

The highs and crashing lows of Waukesha development surfaced again in 1976 in the person of Bob Nanz, the hotshot of his decade, backed by a couple of bank insiders. There was a clear appearance of winking at a yearlong check kiting scheme by Nanz as he tried to paper over the hemorrhage of cash from his developments with a blizzard of bad checks, kited from one empty account to another. One of the insiders was declared non compos mentis by a compliant judge (saving him from possible indictment), but Nanz went to jail.

But, why indulge in this review of long-forgotten Waukesha developer nightmares?

Because it is coming back. It is not hard to imagine today's mega-developers sleeping less than soundly, waking in cold sweat and tremors from dreams that borrow images of Scrooge waking up to Marley's ghost, warning "Don't get over-extended. Beware the bankers who'll toast your Midas touch with single malt scotch tonight and foreclose in the morning".


So, what leads this blogger to predict the return of gloom and doom?


It's Waukesha's Wall of Pain.
This is a bulletin board in the main lobby of City Hall. Over the years, I've seen as many as five or six public notices there at any given time. Yesterday, I saw 72 of them. Sheriff's auctions to be held on the Courthouse steps. Foreclosed houses all over Waukesha County.

And underneath the legal lingo, the anguish of people who are losing their homes is palpable. None of the notices I read was for a debt of less than $100 thousand. A surprising number were for mortgages-in-default in the range of $370 to $490 thousand. One of them was for a house in my neighborhood. I checked the details on the Assessor's web site when I got home. A couple bought the house for about $168 thousand at the end of 2004. Next month their place will go to the highest bidder. Their present indebtedness on the mortgage: $183 thousand.

For every person, couple, family that is subjected to this, there are probably twenty (or fifty, who knows?) who are on the brink, and hundreds (or thousands, who knows?) living from paycheck to paycheck, knowing a layoff means bankruptcy and forclosure.

Too much house. Too much offered. Too much inflation in the appraisal. Too far from work. Too much mortgaged. Too much fantasized equity taken out and spent through home equity borrowing.

A prediction:
Aurora will not build a Pabst Farms Hospital in Oconomowoc. Comes time to float bonds, the implosion of confidence in growth scenarios and looming chaos in real estate financial markets will send the plans up in smoke. Good thing: the best thing that could happen to Pabst Farms is that it goes back to being farms.