This subdivision is toast...

Nice sunny Spring day in Pabst Farms...

...a place that advertised itself early on with the arrogantly dismissive boast:
Everything else is just a subdivision

Something new: two houses, side-by-side, sporting "for sale" signs. And there are at least six others among the few that have been built and occupied, in the past three years that are being offered for sale. One of them is a F.S.B.O.

This one is "For Sale"...
...Or, you could rent it, if you like.
Agents always tell those who come to look at a vacant property that the previous owner was transferred suddenly to a new job in Charleston or some other unlikely place.
But this is a story I heard first-hand last fall. A guy in a white pickup came to install my new DSL service, here in Waukesha. He said that he was losing his P.F. house to foreclosure, that he and his wife had moved to Pabst Farms in 2006, thinking that they could make out pretty well--as flippers--in the hot market. He went on that his business had gone flat, and that his wife's income had been likewise halved.

They were in default, trying to sell, looking at the inevitability of foreclosure. Now, it is probably bank-owned and "for rent"--that's what it says on the little white part of the sign.
(click tho photo to enlarge)

I don't think high speed intercity rail makes sense at this moment in time....

...Not that it never did make sense. And not that it never will...

Listen to Jim Kunstler make a strong case in a conversation with Jebediah Reed of The Infrastructurist, for the need to start with the abandoned/deteriorated rail roadbeds we have, and add to them, to create a great deal more stimulus bang for the stimulus buck.... And for building new rolling stock that isn't necessarily the state-of-the-art level of high tech. Just good intercity rail that will move both people and goods....

JR: So we’re starting a major new round of investment in our national infrastructure. Can we agree that’s a good thing?
JHK: Well, for instance, I think it would be a catastrophic mistake to devote a trillion dollars to fixing up the highways. I mean the days of “happy motoring” in this country truly are behind us. We should be planning for a period when energy resources are much more scarce. Throwing that kind of money at roads is not the way to go about doing this.

How would you be doing it?
I don’t know that I would undertake a spending program like this at all. That said, I’m a pretty strong advocate of repairing the national rail system. It’s obviously not the answer to everything. But it would certainly put a lot of people to work doing something that’s meaningful for society. The infrastructure is out there, waiting to be fixed. I’m pretty adamant that we shouldn’t be going the path of high-tech, maglev, high speed rail at this moment, because we need to prove that we can do this at the Hungarian level before we try to proceed past that.

That doesn’t sound very ambitious.
I perceive one our biggest problems being techno-grandiosity. We are so full of ourselves and so sure that technology is going to rescue us and that we’re so good at it that we can defeat every problem that faces us. It’s a fatal hubris, and it’s subscribed to by an awful lot people who have something to say about the course we take in this country.

In the past, you’ve been critical of Amory Lovins of the Rocky Mountain Institute on similar grounds.
Don’t get me started on Amory Lovins. His basic program for hypercars promotes car dependency. Why do that unless you think we’re going to continue as a car dependent society? That’s why the highway infrastructure thing is so bad, because we’re not going to be able to continue the way we’ve been going. The car is not going to vanish overnight, of course. But it’s certainly going to become a problem as people develop resentments because they can no longer afford to participate in it [as oil prices rise over time].

But you think the answer with rail is to keep it very simple.
Absolutely. The infrastructure is already out there! The track beds are there! And you need an entirely new track corridor for high speed rail, because the high speed trains can’t deal with the curves in the existing tracks. The idea that we would have to create a whole new set of right-of-ways is nuts when we’re not even utilizing what we have. Another thing to keep in mind is that we’re going to be facing a lot of adversity in the years ahead, and we are a culture that will require psychological reassurance. We should have a project that’s achievable. We need to demonstrate to ourselves that we’re still competent.

And the simple version of the national rail buildout would do that.
This rail project is ideal for that purpose. As I’ve said, we’ve got the tracks, and the rolling stock is pretty easy to get. You could argue that GM should be making this stuff. But it’s terribly important that we fortify ourselves psychologically so we have some faith in our ability to face all the other really important challenges that lie in front of us.

A lot of smart people are warning that if we’re going make this kind of enormous national investment, it would be a political disaster for Obama not to have some very tangible things to show for it.
Well, 2009 could turn out to be a politically rocky year. It’s really not clear how things are going play out in terms of the energy picture, the oil picture, and the picture for finance and capital. I’m afraid what’s really going on here is that a huge amount of capital is gone and is never, ever coming back again in any form.

If that’s true it would have been nice to have converted more of it into real and useful things while it was around — like, say, a good national rail network and a better electrical grid.

I read a real estate soothsayer today: "Housing Market has bottomed; good time to buy, because interest rates are low..."

It is a good time to buy,

• IF you have a 20% downpayment
• IF your credit score is above 740
• IF you can sell the house you're in now
• If your income/employment is secure
  

MarketWatch has an article looking at the fact that many Americans are one or two paychecks away from financial ruin:

“A MetLife study released last week found that 50% of Americans said they have only a one-month cushion — roughly two paychecks — or less before they would be unable to fully meet their financial obligations if they were to lose their jobs. More disturbing is that 28% said they could not make ends meet for longer than two weeks without their jobs.

And it’s not just low-income earners who would find themselves financially challenged. Twenty-nine percent of those making $100,000 or more a year said they would have trouble paying the bills after more than a month of unemployment.

Meanwhile, more than four in 10 respondents told pollsters in a recent Pew Research Center study that job-related issues were the nation’s most important economic problem.

“Since October, mentions of other major economic issues have declined, as the public is increasingly focused on the job situation,” according to the Pew study.

Since July, the study noted, there was been a striking spike in the numbers of families making $100,000 or more who said it was difficult to find local jobs — 73% compared with 40% eight months ago.”

Read the above carefully. 1 in 2 Americans are 2 paychecks away from massive financial trouble. 1 in 4 would be on the financial edge after 2 weeks only. These are fully employed people.
Read the rest

Strange stuff from Wis DOT....

A few weeks ago, one of the principals of Pabst Farms Development participated in an open forum on the progress of the development, particularly the "upscale" regional shopping mall proposed as whipped topping for the dead-in-the-water Pabst Farms Subdivision.

Daniel Warren (in addition to being one of the big dogs at Pabst Farms Development is President of the Waukesha Water Utility Commission AND President of the Waukesha School Board) was quoted twice in the Waukesha Freeman saying to the group that WisDOT had spent "five to six million dollars already" on the new diamond interchange to be added to Oconomowoc to accommodate all the shoppers and upscale residents who would soon be flocking there.

The audience included lots of skeptical Oconomowoc citizens, grown weary and cynical over empty promises and hallucinated "hopeful signs" that the upscale mall was actually going to happen. They were looking for news about who was signing up to open stores--some reality to balance the baloney about Bonwit-Teller, Lord & Taylor, Ikea (that's upscale?) pipe dreams that had been floated early in the game.

"Five to Six Million Dollars," already spent on the interchange, this was big news, considering that the project has been put on hold, delayed, assigned a low priority, and--in most observers' realistic estimation--abandoned. I called the local DOT Communications pro, located in Waukesha. Who should answer but Dennis Shook, former Waukesha Freeman scribe, cut loose from that superb daily fishwrap several years back, in one of their regular purges.

Shook is a garrulous guy (and I'm not shy). So, there was a bit of small talk We reminisced briefly about some of the Freeman glory days. Then, I asked him where Warren got his information, whether he could confirm it. Shook said that his information was that "four to six million" had already been spent on the interchange; he mentioned something about the high cost of "grubbing". We shot the breeze a bit more, then I hung up.

A few hours later I sent him this e-mail.

"I talked with you earlier this morning. And, now I have a request. Will you please do some digging and provide more precise figures than the ones you offered this morning.

"As I recall it, I asked you whether Daniel Warren, quoted twice in the Waukesha Freeman, was correct in saying that "five or six million" had already been spent on the Pabst Farms interchange. Your response was that "four to six million had already been spent.

"I'd like to be able to quote you on a precise figure. More precise numbers, broken down by category, distinguishing among dollars spent, allocated, contracted, disbursed or any other useful category that DOT uses.

Thank you in advance."

To which Shook replied:

Dear Sir: I was unaware that you were quoting me at all. As you did not identify yourself, you should not use my comments.

Dennis A. Shook
WisDOT, SE Regional Office
Regional Communications Manager
141 NW Barstow St.
Waukesha, WI 53188
(cell) 1-414-750-2395

To which I replied:

The only thing I'm interested in is the figures on what has been, to date, "spent, allocated, contracted, disbursed" on the work defined and identified as Sawyer Road/Hwy P diamond interchange upgrade.

Everything else we discussed was just small talk. Mr. Warren, one of the Pabst Farms principals, appeared to have an official source for his statements. I am interested only in getting the same information that Mr. Warren has.

I would appreciate your getting those figures for me, as I am aware it is public information and available to the public.

Jim Bouman

I let this sit for a week and a half, thinking that Shook was working on it. When nothing arrived, I called his supervisor in Madison. The supervisor lit a fire under him. Seemingly, he had persuaded himself that I didn't mean it; or, that his retroactive declaration of "Off the record" held water.

Today I got this:

Dear Mr. Bouman:

Thank you for your inquiries on the Highwa P/Interstate 94 interchange. Here are the answers I was able to collect:

*To date, WisDOT has spent $8.8 million, broken down as : $1.4 million for design, $5 million for real estate acquisition, and $2.4 million for clearing and grubbing (including the crossover).

*WisDOT does not have a final project cost because the project size has yet to be determined.

*No other funds have been spent on the project or allocated to it.

Hope this helps. Thank you.

Dennis A. Shook

At long last, it is revealed: The reason Dennis Shook got canned from the Waukesha Freeman.

In most circumstances, a pink slip from Freeman editor, Bill Yorth, could be spun as advantageous to a job-seeker: too objective, insufficiently devoted to right wing causes, inclined to analytical thinking, determined to use the Wisconsin Open Meetings Law to get the facts, literate...lotsa stuff in short supply among journalists these days.

He's Civil Service, now. He's got Marty Beil backing him up. Dennis has settled in for the long haul. He'll retire as a WisDOT bullshit artist.

...this paean to the inherent nobility of the common man

This past weekend saw the Milwaukee Symphony presenting--under the direction of departing Maestro, Andreas Delfs--three pieces, beginning with Aaron Copland's Fanfare for the Common Man.

Before the music started, I enjoyed reading Roger Ruggeri's Program Notes. Long the principal bassist at the Symphony, Ruggieri has been writing--for decades--witty and knowledgeable introductions and short histories of the music, in the Encore program. He's an engaging writer, does great research and often adds a little-known fact about how the music came into being.

Here's what he wrote about Copland, the naming the Fanfare and how the date of the 1943 debut performance was chosen.

Notes by Roger Ruggeri © 2009

Aaron Copland
b. November 14, 1900; Brooklyn, NY
d. December 2, 1990; New York City
Fanfare for the Common Man

Composed in 1942 for the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, this 3-minute fanfare was first performed by them and their Music Director, Eugene Goossens on March 12, 1943. Scored for four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, bass drum and tam tam, the work has been performed many times by the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra...

Evoking the essential American spirit with the ringing sonority of brass and percussion, Fanfare for the Common Man was written in response to a commission for a patriotic fanfare for the opening concert of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra’s 1942-43 season.

Copland recalled: “…The music was not terribly difficult to compose, but working slowly as was my custom, I did not have the fanfare ready to send to Goossens until November. I had some difficulty with the title. The piece has been Fanfare for the Common Man for so long that it is surprising to see on my sketches that other titles were considered: Fanfare for a Solemn Ceremony, for the Day of Victory, for Our Heroes, for the Rebirth of Lidice, for the Spirit of Democracy, for the Paratroops, for Four Freedoms.…After I decided on Fanfare for the Common Man and sent the score to Goossens, I think he was rather puzzled by the title. He wrote, ‘It’s title is as original as its music, and I think it is so telling that it deserves a special occasion for its performance. If it is agreeable to you, we will premiere it 12 March[*] 1943 at income tax time.…”

In these days, when bitching about the injustice of taxation is glorified as the height of patriotism, it makes me think of my old friend, Bob Overs, whose advice on being a good citizen was simply: "Pay your taxes cheerfully and always, always vote".

* Not until 1955 was the due date of Federal Income taxes moved from the Ides of March to April 15.

Soda Bread

The teaspoon is there merely as a size reference. I found two iron skillets--8 inch and 6 inch--at an estate sale. Makes two loaves from the typical recipe-- which was sized to the heirloom 10 inch skillet.

Have never understood where midwestern folk on St. Patrick's Day come up with the notion that Corned Beef and Cabbage is Irish fare.

And green beer? Sheesh!

Here's the recipe. Won the prize* the Irish Fest/Red Star Yeast Baking contest in 1994.

4 C. Flour
1 T. Baking Powder
1 t. Baking Soda
1 t. Salt
All sifted together

2/3 C. Sugar creamed with 2 T. Butter; with 2 small (1 large) Egg added.

1 C. Raisins, steamed with 1/4 C. water.

1 1/2 C. Buttermilk

Sugar/butter/eggs in the bottom of a big mixing bowl, dry ingredients on top of that, buttermilk and raisins added gradually as it is mixed with a big wooden spoon. Stop with the buttermilk if it is getting too wet. Turn into lightly greased pan(s). No need to knead. Top should look craggy in the pan--before and after the baking.

Bake 50 to 70 minutes at 350 degrees in pre-heated oven 'til a toothpick comes out clean.
Turn it out of the pan immediately to cool on a rack.


* First Prize was a Belleek platter, which was a beautiful and treasured piece...until they annealed the image of fookin' Paddy McFest to it.

Journal Company in the tank...

Yesterday, Morningstar, was able to report on the basis of inter-day fluctuations in price, that the stock of Journal Company, (JRN)--publishers of the increasingly fetid daily Milwaukee Journal Sentinel--had shown a gain of 10%.

Whoopee!

Then we teased out the details. After opening at just about $0.43 per share, someone bumped the price by a nickel and induced this amazing ten percent increase in valuation (not for long, though; the price then retreated to forty cents at the end of trading.

Ten percent of squat is diddly squat.

One might predict that soon Patrick McIlheran, Mabel Wong and David Haynes--right wing troika of opinion--will be looking for a rexograph or mimeo machine to put out their increasingly tone-deaf nonsense.

From the Diplomatic pouch...direct to the President's desk (eyes only)...

Barry:

Everything under control here in Jerusalem.

Everyone who matters is happy.

Back in a few days; I have some ideas for your health care project.

Hil

This letter from the rabble in a neighborhood near the Wailing Wall was thrust rudely into my hands just as I was receiving a warm, gratitudinous smooch from Shimon Peres.

click here to read the letter.

Send 'em the Bedbug Letter.

Atul Gawande for Surgeon General, Health Czar, some kind of key leadership role in the establishment of universal access to health care....

Atul Gawande, MD is a surgeon, an experienced hand in presidential policy making and program implementation, a New Yorker magazine staff writer, an utterly engaging public speaker, persuasive as all get-out, a pragmatist, on and on.



He looks like he could have got his start in Bollywood, though he's a native of Athens, Ohio.

I don't know whether he's been approached about a health administration position in the Obama government. If not, he should be, particularly since Sanjay Gupta is rumored to be backing away from a possible appointment to the position of Surgeon General.

Here's his website, starting with the biography page. Next thing to click is articles.

I recommend his most recent New Yorker article, then the ones on "Checklists" and "Piecework".

Backwards and forward

“Politics is like driving. To go backward, put it on R. To go forward, put it on D.”

by True Majority in the Daily Kos.

This is the week, in small towns, when farmers sit down with bankers...

Jim Kunstler at CFN asks an unsettling question about the collapse of lending and the number of farmers who will look (as they have always looked) like pretty iffy borrowers as they go to their bankers for production loans.

The net effect of the failures in banking is that a lot of people have less money than they expected they would have a year ago. This is bad enough, given our habits and practices of modern life. But what happens when farming collapses? The prospect for that is closer than most of us might realize. The way we produce our food has been organized at a scale that has ruinous consequences, not least its addiction to capital.
Now that banking is in collapse, capital will be extremely scarce. Nobody in the cities reads farm news, or listens to farm reports on the radio. Guess what, though: we are entering the planting season. It will be interesting to learn how many farmers "out there" in the Cheez Doodle belt are not able to secure loans for this year's crop.

When I am elected president, I will...

Mr. President:

We know you are busy. And, Cuba is not at the top of your list.

Changing the Cuba Travel Ban and the Embargo are complex. Frankly, we understand that you have your eye on the collapse of the economy and winding down George Bush's wars. And Congress will be needed to change these. We'll wait.

However, with no more than a minute of your time and a signature you can fulfill the promise you made in Miami before a packed house in Little Havana. George Bush created cruel and nasty new rules that affect hundreds of thousands of Cuban families in the U.S. and Cuba. It was done in a minute with nothing more than a presidential signature. You need only undo the damage --with a presidential signature. No need to think about it; you've already made the decision and announced it. You did it over a year ago when you said:

When I am elected president, I will grant Cuban Americans unrestricted rights to visit family and send remittances to the island....

A promise is a promise....

NY Times front page typo with an extra twist...

In a story about formerly highly paid middle class and upper middle class strivers reduced to working janitorial and phone monkey jobs, the Times reporter quotes one of them on the psychological adjustment which is just as difficult as the financial one, with their sense of identity and self-worth upended.

It has been like peeling back the lawyers of a bad onion," said Ame Arlt, 53, who recently accepted a position as a customer service representative at an online insurance-leads referral service in Franklin, Tenn., after 20 years of working in executive jobs. "With every layer you peel back, you discover something else about yourself. You have to make an adjustment."

That's in the front porch edition. It got corrected early on-line.

Just a few days ago I was assembling a pot roast with the usual complement of eight whole onions. It was surprising how many of them were bad--lawyer after stinking lawyer hiding beneath the perfectly formed and unblemished outer layer.

Enough to make you cry.

The proposed Pabst Farms interchange will be a huge waste of money...

It is not needed. There is plenty of access to new development at the gateway to Oconomowoc with the existing interchanges.

Click on this Aerial photograph link. When you get there, click on "satellite view," and choose "show labels". Look for the 2 interchanges--the proposed upgrade is to the one at Sawyer (Hwy P) .

Two things to note. At costlyway speeds on 1-94, the Hwy P intersection and Summit interchange are mere seconds apart, a few feet more than a mile apart.

Moreover, Hwy P already has on- and off-ramps for traffic coming from and returning to I-94 east of Oconomowoc. Turning this into a $25 million diamond interchange is unnecessary. And anyone traveling east on 94, wanting to go to Pabst Farms, Aurora Hospital or the businesses associated with PF is already perfectly well served by the existing Summit Avenue (Hwy 67) interchange.

Anyone approaching from the west would be crazy to pass Summit in order to exit at P. The hospital doesn't show on this dated photo, but is being built now near the small lake next to Summit and just south of I 94.

There was never much to be gained from the DOT construction at Sawyer Rd in the heady days when everyone predicted success for Pabst Farms and allied developments.

And there is a lot less to be gained, now.

POLICE BLOTTER Waukesha Police Department

I've never actually seen a "Police Blotter". But, this is what the Waukesha Freeman published today, seemingly, their "take" on what our local police are doing:

MONDAY Feb 16, 2009

11 a.m. – A woman reportedly wanted transients who were living in her backyard in the 1100 block of Whiterock Avenue to be removed after they lit a fire.

1:24 p.m. – A drunk who was found in the transit center in the 200 block of East St. Paul Avenue was reported as not looking in good shape.

1:47 p.m. – A male was reported for trying to start fires in an elevator in the 200 block of Barstow Street.

2:09 p.m. – A suspect was reported held down at gunpoint after a foot pursuit near Garfield Avenue and West Wabash Avenue.

5:33 p.m. – A woman who just arrived at her house in the 2900 block of Rolling Ridge Drive reported that someone may be in her home. The house was found to be empty.

5:42 p.m. – A suspicious man was reported sitting in a vehicle in the 1800 block of Milky Way Road. He told police he was watching turkeys.

It's hard to tell what's going on here: Is this merely the the worst reportorial hash from the worst reportorial (and editorial) hash-house in Wisconsin?

Or is it a realistic view of what the local cop shop is doing on an average day?

During the recent budget-making by the Waukesha Mayor and City Council, the No. 2 in the Police Department submitted an analysis of the frightening state of understaffing in the Department.

He said a lot, and gave a lot of comparative statistics.

But it all boiled down to this.

"We need an additional 42 uniformed officers to adequately protect the people of Waukesha".

Hey, It's National Brotherhood Week

The National Conference of Christians and Jews (which later morphed into the National Conference for Community and Justice, cleverly finessing the problem of changing their initials) once sponsored a week-long National Brotherhood Week, held generally during the third full week of February (cleverly cross-ruffing Lincoln's Birthday into the special week) from the 1940s through the mid-1980s.

The irony of the assassination of Malcolm X on the first day of National Brotherhood Week (cleverly landing also on Lincoln's Birthday) in 1965, inspired the Tom Lehrer song "National Brotherhood Week," and crystallized the state of race relations in the United States.

Lehrer--surviving today, well into his 80s--gave up on singing and performing his wickedly trenchant tunes in early 1970s. There is an urban legend that Lehrer gave up political satire when the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Henry Kissinger in 1973. He did say that the awarding of the prize to Kissinger made political satire obsolete.

It's hard to believe that this cabaret performance was even a little bit edgy. But the 1960s are light years from today's standard fare. Lehrer had an interesting and notable career in academia (mathematics) and musical comedy.

Pentagon explains why they keep going to the poisoned well...

Josh Marshall at TPM discovered that Laurie Mylroie, wacko conspiracy theorist who connected Saddam Heussein to virtually every terrorist attack against since the '93 World Traded Center bombing, has been writing analytic pieces for the Department of Defense, as late as Oct., 2007.

....about the selection process for ONA researchers, a DOD spokesperson said in a statement:
"All aspects of researchers and research institutions are considered, with an 
emphasis on obtaining the widest range of possible intellectual approaches in order to provide a fully balanced approach to the analysis of future developments."

And how did the Pentagon use Mylroie's Iraq reports? Says DOD: "These reports were part of a multi-scope research effort to identify the widest possible range of analysts whose expertise was likely to generate insights and concepts which would contribute to Net Assessments on-going work to develop and refine trends, risks, and opportunities which will shape future (2020) national security environments."

Don't ya just love that special brand of rarefied Pentagon bafflegab bullshit?

It is time to begin cost cutting in the Pentagon. Re-assign thousands of careerist wimps whose reason for existence is to get serial desk jockey promotions leading to retirement gigs in the right wing think tanks and with weapons contractors.

Makes you wonder what Judy Miller is up to these days. Probably the same kind of honest work her pal, Laurie, is doing.

Amidst all the inaugural talk about how things are gonna change...

...Mr. Obama deserves credit for a lot of things, but perhaps most amazingly his ability to see "hope" in a public so demoralized by their own bad choices that the USA scene has devolved to a non-stop Special Olympics of everyday life, where absolutely everybody is debilitated, deluded, challenged, or needs a leg up, or an extra buck, or a pallet on the floor, or a gastric bypass, or a week in detox, or a head-start, or a fourth strike, or a $150-billion bailout.

There 's a lot of raw material from sea to shining sea, admittedly, but how do you re-shape it into a population guided by a sense of earnest purpose, with reality-based expectations, with habits of delayed gratification and impulse control, and a sense of their own history?

Jim Kunstler, CFN

The least-known and least-quoted speech of Dr. King...

Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence

By Rev. Martin Luther King
4 April 1967

Speech delivered by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., on April 4, 1967, at a meeting of Clergy and Laity Concerned at Riverside Church in New York City. On the same date, one year later, he was dead of an assassin's bullet.

"A time comes when silence is betrayal."

---

I come to this magnificent house of worship tonight because my conscience leaves me no other choice. I join with you in this meeting because I am in deepest agreement with the aims and work of the organization which has brought us together: Clergy and Laymen Concerned about Vietnam. The recent statement of your executive committee are the sentiments of my own heart and I found myself in full accord when I read its opening lines: "A time comes when silence is betrayal." That time has come for us in relation to Vietnam.

The rest here

Freeman columnist 'splains it all.

Some show Courage; others are into Betrayal

Mark Belling, this AM in Waukesha:

.... Two local politicians are currently sticking their necks out. The stance of one is principled and correct while the other is again proving herself to be a political moonbat.

...Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker is saying he doesn’t want the money. How out of sync is Walker? He’s the lone hog in the back of the barn while all the other pigs are battling for position at the feeding trough.

It is terribly obvious the Obama plan will put fortunes in the hands of poverty pimps, political hustlers, grubby contractors and anybody else with a political pal.... But Walker realizes the federal money is a one-time thing.... Walker is saying he’ll only take money that requires no local match and no local operating costs. I haven’t found a single other politician in Wisconsin recognizing that the federal stimulus money will create massive new local spending.

In the meantime, Milwaukee Congresswoman Gwen Moore was on the losing side of a 390-5 vote in the U.S. House affirming Israel’s right to defend itself in Gaza. How far out in crackpot field is Moore? Consider the other four “no” votes: Ron Paul, the token Republican terror sympathizer, Maxine Waters, the Californian who oozes niceties about Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez, Dennis Kucinich, the Democratic peacenik even lefties are embarrassed by and somebody named Rahall.

The non-binding resolution passed unanimously in the U.S. Senate with even ultra-liberals like Ted Kennedy and Russ Feingold voting for it. Moore is way out on the fringe on this one. Aside from Moore’s apparent belief that Israelis should have to suffer through daily bombings from Palestinians who think all Jews should die, her position is a betrayal of the many prominent Milwaukee Jews who have contributed heavily to her political fund. [emphasis added]

The jury is out on how Obama will respond to the Islamist terror threat but it’s fairly apparent that the jihadists have a dear friend in Gwen Moore.

This guy isn't just wrong...He's bent.

A Generational Anthem for Change

o The poet will read the poem of the day to millions of blank stares.

o The preacher (I'm hoping he'll reveal how--just the day before-- he was struck down on the Road to Damascus, the scales fell from his eyes, and he regrets that nasty bigoted stuff he said about gay marriage) will preach while millions put their fingers in their ears and intone: "Lalalalalalalalal....I'm not listening....lalalalalalalalal....I can't hear you".

o The President-elect will oath and promise to preserve and protect, getting the multitude all teary-eyed and lump-in-the-throat-ish.

And as we all prepare to listen to the inaugural address, we'll need a musical interlude to set the tone for the new President's program.
Though I heard a little piece of it sampled in some otherwise forgettable hip-hop a while back, It's likely many Obamaniacs have never listened to the greatest protest song of the 60s,

Compared to What.

It is--to our enduring shame--still up-to-the-minute. It had been in Les McCann's repertoire for six years. But the 1969 Montreux version with Eddie Harris, was released as a single and became a generational anthem for change.

Sixty years ago today....

The fledgling United Nations boldly stated

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights

I call for a recommitment to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which recognizes that "the inherent dignity and... the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world."

I accept and respect the principles outlined in the Declaration and call on my government and the newly elected President of the United States to recommit to the Declaration and lead the world by example.

Just when millions are losing their health insurance...

At just the moment all Americans are staring in the face of an economic outlook that ranges from stressful to disastrous, comes this snapshot of current health status. Researchers found that "85% of Americans rated their own health as "excellent," "very good," or "good" in the on-going assessment of status of Americans over the age of 18.

But, the details of their own reports of indicators of ill-health, specific diagnosed conditions and unhealthy-but-not-disabling (yet) vulnerabilities reveals that they might be a great deal less healthy than they think.

Greta Kilmer, an epidemiologist with the Centers for Disease Control, and the lead author of the the report detailing status for 2006 says: "It may be that people are engaging in risky behaviors that will come back to hurt them. Most chronic diseases take time to affect your health."

Logistics

And ye shall beat your swords into plowshares and your spears into pruning hooks; neither shall you study war any more. Variously attributed to the prophet Isaiah, the prophet Micah and numerous non-religious wise men through the ages.

And the last thing we'd want to do is leave all those swords and spears laying around on the erstwhile battlefield after the soldiers have headed home, some horizontal, some addled and broken, others hooting about "Mission Accomplished".

Is anyone gonna clean up this mess?



Yes, of course. That's called Logistics.
I became an expert in questions of movement of armies and Bonaparte's dictum that armies travel on their stomachs by referring often to the astonishingly tragic and heart-breaking story told in this graphic by Charles Joseph Minard. The subject: Napoleon's Moscow campaign of 1812.
They were no match for the vicissitudes of weather, terrain and fleas. Typhus-ridden fleas which Grand Armee bedded down with in the countryside as they foraged their way into Russia that summer. Fleas probably killed more of Napoleon's men than the Cossacks did. And each new day brought the choice: ride that horse or eat it.
The Czar's crafty military strategy was to stay fifty miles ahead of Napoleon's column, slaughtering and burning everything edible, a day or two before the enemy planned to capture and eat it.
Fast forward 200 years.
Merely looking at the map of Iraq suggests the difficulties in removing hundreds of thousands of men and women and $$$Tens, probably hundreds, of Billions $$$ of materiel and equipment from that place. Iraq's bordering states: Iran, Turkey, Syria, Jordan and Saudi Arabia present a simple fact: everything has to leave by way of the single port on the Persian Gulf, on ships that must travel practically within hollering distance of the Iranian coast, then make a hairpin turn while wriggling through the 30-mile-wide Straits of Hormuz.

With the shortages of enlisted troops, my guess is that the Armed Forces of the US have been paying scant attention to training for the coordinated withdrawal of all those people and all that gear.

It's "physically impossible," says "a top officer involved in briefing the President-elect on U.S. operations in Iraq," according to Time Magazine.

In a nutshell, the Pentagon's argument couldn't be simpler or more red-bloodedly American: We have too much stuff to leave Iraq any time soon. In war, as in peace, we're trapped by our own profligacy. We are the Neiman Marcus and the Wal-Mart of combat. Where we go, our "stuff" goes with us - in such prodigious quantities that removing it is going to prove more daunting than invading in the first place....

Some have estimated, however, that simply getting each of the 14 combat brigades still stationed in Iraq on January 20, 2009, out with all their equipment might take up to 75 days per brigade. (If you do the math, that's 36 months, and even that wouldn't suffice if you wanted to remove everything else we now have in that California-sized country.)

Read the whole story by Tom Engelhardt here at Truthout.

Studs Terkel 1912 - 2008

Studs talking with Amy Goodman on the radio last year
on his 95th birthday.


Amy Goodman:  Last words for young people today?

Studs Terkel:  My epitaph is Curiosity did not kill this cat.


And ya ain't done nothing
if ya ain't been called a Red.
If you marched or agitated,
then you're bound to hear it said.
So you might as well ignore it
or love the word instead.
Cuz ya ain't been doing nothing
if ya ain't been called a Red.  Faith Petric

I did a little research today...

It's easy in the City of Waukesha to research information on the ownership, price-paid, tax valuation, estimated full market value, as well as details on year-built, lot size, amenities, square footage of any residential property. All you need to know is the address. When a "sold" sign goes up on the real estate agent's sign, you can quickly learn what it just sold for.

Try it yourself: go to this link and plug in your own address.

I did it with a piece of information printed in some of the sludge-on-newsprint bundled with the daily Waukesha Freeman (disclaimer: I do not buy the Freeman: I can't use it; I have very little fish to wrap. I found it on the counter in the coffee shop this morning).

In a listing of recent sales/closings of real estate in City of Waukesha was this notation:

October 24, 2008 -- 2701 Sandra Lane -- $190,000.

The details were all there in the link (above) when I plugged in that address. It is a Condo:

Year built -- 1999
Last Sale -- May, 2003 -- $205,900
"Valid" sale -- means that it was an arm's-length (willing selller/willing buyer) transaction, not an "I sold it to my son for a buck" exchange.
Assessed Value -- $235,400. This was its valuation on the 2008 tax bill.
Total estimated Fair Market Value -- $257,700. This is an informal update to assessed valuation, hinting at what the owner would likely pay taxes on in a year in which all property is re-assessed. It goes w/o saying that it isn't in actually touch with present reality.
Recent Sale -- October 24, 2008, what was reported in the Freeman this morning: $190,000.

There is likely a very sad, if not painful, story here. The recent sellers' names are in the information, and they have my sympathy. It is public information. Just five years ago they paid Sixteen Thousand dollars more than they realized from the sale this week. Add in $8 or $10 thousand in selling expenses and it looks like economic slaughter. It is not unlikely they had to bring money to the closing.

What does this mean for thee and me?

If this keeps up (even though only a small minority of owners are selling their homes) the assessment process will use this and similar current sales information to gauge the value of all similar homes in the city at the time of the next re-assessment. That is likely to be scheduled within a year or two. The net effect of lots of properties currently languishing unsold or changing hands for severely depressed prices, will drive down everyone else's valuation. And the City of Waukesha's total tax base will shrink. For decades it has grown, every year, year-after-year. Now, it is beginning to contract.

And the cost of government: Municipal, County, Schools, VTAE will be spread over fewer-than expected households, less tax base

In the past, homeowners met higher valuations of their property with mixed emotions. They typically enjoyed the notion of their property being worth more (on the assumption that the assessor's valuation was correct and that one could realistically expect to sell the property for the assessed amount or more). And they knew from experience that when the tax base is expandinging (that's what sprawl is all about) tax rates do not usually go up very much since there are more properties/taxpayers on whom the costs are spread.

There is every reason to believe that--with a huge number of houses in Waukesha for sale-- that other sellers are hearing their own personal real estate bubble POP as they take whatever offer comes their way.

A very nice house on the block where I live has been vacant for ten months, the owners-- now living in Menominee Falls--are paying on two mortgages. They came down a dime, will probably have to come down another quarter before it sells. I see them regularly, as they come back to the neighborhood to keep the landscape in ship-shape.

The anxiety is palpable.

Beware...

Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes.
Henry David Thoreau

A small, obscure report and a bit of history on delinquent taxes in Waukesha County...

I asked Waukesha City Treasurer, Thomas Neill two weeks ago about how tax collections were holding up.

He wrote back:

Amount of real estate billed for 2007 (all taxing districts) $111,506,208. Amount turned over to the County on 7/31/08 was $773,879 (they make us whole and collect from that point on).
I do not have data readily available from prior years, but the County Treasurer might. I believe the amount uncollected from year to year is pretty consistent!

Background: The City of Waukesha sends out a tax bill that bundles together the bills for all the local taxing authorities--County Govt., WCTC, School District and Municipality. Same procedure for each city, town and village in Waukesha County.

Anyone who has not paid in full by July 31 is delinquent. The practice, embedded in State Law (see Wisconsin Statutes 74.57) is that the County Treasurer receives all the money collected by the end of July and disburses the amounts to each taxing authority. The County sends the full amount of the budgeted and assessed taxes to the City of Waukesha and all the others, even though some taxes are delinquent. That's what Neil meant by "...they make us whole....".

Tax collections on the late payers becomes the task of the County Treasurer. Because the penalties and interest on unpaid taxes are stiff, a lot of delinquent taxes get paid fairly quickly--to avoid further financial loss. And the Treasurer keeps the penalty money to finance the debt-collection work.

Our elected County Treasurer, Pam Reeves, provided some more information: once all the tax-supported entities had been "made whole" out of county funds (that is, they received monies equal to the amount levied by each taxing authority) she computes how much still has to be wrung out of the tax deadbeats. The amount of unpaid taxes for 2008 budget year is $9,762,678.34. And that's reported to the County Board, as displayed above.

So far, everything seems to be proceeding as expected. What Reeves showed me that I didn't expect is the large increase both in the number of delinquencies and in the aggregate total of taxes that are delinquent. Reeves, thoughtfully, penciled in the percent increase for 2007 over 2006. That's a big jump, almost 30 percent. And 2006 was 16 percent higher than the previous year, which was 13 percent higher than the year before that.

Looks like a trend. Relax, gentle reader; it isn't ugly...yet. But if the trend continues it will, indeed, be ugly.

As foreclosures increase, there will be more delinquencies...
As houses get sold for a fraction of their assessed value in foreclosure actions, the tax assessor's valuations will--by law--decrease...
As the aggregate assessed value of real estate in any given municipality decreases, the tax burden will fall on diminishing tax base...
As the tax base diminishes, the tax rate per thousand of assessed value will increase...

The key word is exponential.

And the last word on "exponential" is the ineffable wisdom of Dr Albert Bartlett of the University of Colorado at Boulder:

"The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function."

This one is gonna vote for...

That One.

I deny that I had any hand in the (s)election of George W. Bush eight years ago, merely because I voted for Ralph Nader (and went to jail over my right to assert my position). And I continue to assert that no other Nader voter has any culpability for the rise of GWB.

Nevertheless, I call attention to the Obama/Biden political sign on my front lawn.

Note that it appears on the "gospel" side of the lawn. The bride controls the gospel side; and it is she who initially asserted support for Barack Obama. But, I have no Nader sign on the epistle side, nor will I plant one.

I'm gonna vote for the Democrat.

The victory may go to the Republican candidate and running mate. It is possible, though, today it does not seem likely.

The victory--no matter who wins--is likely to be on a close vote.

I still prefer Nader, for reasons I stated earlier this year, before either major party had chosen their nominee. But, in the present surreal world of American politics, wrapped in economic chaos, stewing in racial hysteria, inches from complete breakdown, which

...Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.

I'll take that one.

Rowen's take on Water politics in Waukesha--with a kicker from Water Blogged....

What is likely to be quite troublesome for the Waukesha Water Utility over the next few years is that it has been virtually run by one guy for most of the past 21 years. A guy whose judgment seems to be increasingly--exponentially--faulty.

Daniel Warren, Water Utility President, runs what he believes is a tight ship.

o Over the past four years, there has been virtually absolute unanimity on the key decisions. Warren makes up an agenda that calls for a Closed (secret) meeting, and there's never a dissent, never a peep questioning the necessity/propriety of making still more faulty, in secret, decisions-- like those Jim Rowen recounted in this recent Political Environment blog post.

o He was investigated and found in violation of the Wisconsin Open Meetings Law twenty seven months ago. Lackluster lightweight DA, Paul Bucher, (who has, mercifully, moved on) let him off the hook with a "give-a-hundred-bucks-to-charity" non-penalty.

o He has a key role in an evolving mess of financial jiggery-pokery at the Waukesha School Board (where he was recently installed as president). In 2006, as chairman of the School District Finance Committee, he made the case to the others on the School Board for borrowing money to invest in wildly speculative investments in CDOs--those once-nifty-now-worthless turds in the Wall Street punchbowl that underlie the current world-wide economic cataclysm.

o He is one the key actors in the development of Pabst Farms (evincing yet more faulty judgment).

o Twenty months ago he demonstrated astonishingly bad judgment and an unexpected recklessness by lurching into his SUV, and attempting to weave his way home on Hwy 16, late on a Saturday night with a BAC of 0.138, otherwise known as "shitfaced" and fallingdowndrunk.

It's time for Dan Warren to accept the thanks of this community for decades of work (a great deal of it quite competent and certainly useful) on the Waukesha Water Utility Commission and leave the remaining work of finding solutions to pressing problems to a diverse and broadly-experienced group of citizens. He should decline any nomination to a continued role as president during the last year of his current term.

It is also time for the Waukesha Common Council to see to expanding (and term-limiting) the membership of the Water Utility Commission. Warren has been able to dominate Commission decision making because it is packed (40%) with ex-officio members from the mayor's office and the Common Council and two other citizen-members, neither of whom shows much potential for leadership.

If Waukesha is to come to some resolution of its water supply and water quality problems, it will best be done by a new group of citizens and municipal leaders with common sense and a concern about living in the real world, citizens who are skeptical of development pipe dreams, consultant-driven schemes, and customer-be-damned secrecy in finding the right path to a solution to this community's water supply and water quality problems.

Down deep....

Down deep, where they connect with other Americans....

Down deep, where we try to connect with them as fellow human beings....

Down deep, where we listen for the indicators that they really understand what America is about....


Down Deep? They're shallow.


Vote Nader.

Local water politics, with regional implications.

The Waukesha Water Utility has been the private fiefdom of Daniel Warren and Gerald Couri for decades. These two are (or, until recently, were) the private citizen members who, between them, have held the seats (and the elected officer posts of President and Secretary) for approximately thirty-five years.

Couri's three year term is up on Wednesday and Mayor Larry Nelson has replaced Couri with an unknown naif, who--as Nelson put it: "...volunteered to serve".

The new member showed up at the Thursday, Sept. 25 meeting and hesitated to sit at the table because he seemed to be unsure about whether his appointment had been ratified by the Waukesha Common Council.

Asked to respond to the welcome by the assembled Commissioners, Allen Roeker described himself simply as a mechanical engineer who "...has some experience with fluid mechanics...". That little resume tidbit is right up there with a candidate's claim to foreign policy experience a la: "On a clear day you can see all the way to Russia from Alaska".

It was pretty clear that he is a complete-blank-slate newcomer to the issues that face the Commission. He's never been seen at a commission meeting in the three years Water Blogged has followed water politics in Waukesha. He has no publicly-stated position on any issue that faces the commission. He's a prime candidate to be a new water-carrier for Daniel Warren.

I offer my sincere wish that he serve a useful term representing the interests of Waukesha rate-payers and citizens as he assumes the responsibilities of Water Utility Commissioner.

[Full disclosure: I offered my services to Mayor Larry two years ago; Mayor Larry declined. And, who could blame him? I told him that I thought the Commission needed some "loyal opposition;" Mayor Larry told me--in so many words--that he didn't need any opposition; he needed heavy duty conformity.]

Larry seemed, then, to need someone who would follow the Water Utility's custom: never dissent; always vote in the affirmative when a roll call vote is called. Ask no serious questions. Do everything Daniel Warren (Commissioner for the past 21 years, Commission President for most of those years) proposes. Meet in secret session whenever Warren says he wants a secret session.

Most of all: Maintain the Water Utility's virtually unbroken record of unanimous approval of every matter requiring a roll call vote for over three years. (I say virtually unbroken because once--just once-- a Commissioner did cast a lone dissenting vote over a non-issue, approximately a year and a half ago. Before the next meeting, that commissioner had been replaced by Mayor Nelson).

Commissioner Roeker may, perhaps, have a source of advice on how to be a good and useful citizen volunteer. His wife, is Chair of the Waukesha Department of Parks, Recreation and Forestry Board and a member of the City Planning Commission.

Dynastic politics?

Roeker's first highly visible challenge will be to assess whether the coming (probably December or January) whopping rate increase is crafted in a way that serves the citizens or the outrageous development-forever-as-far-as-the-eye-can-see interests of Mayor Larry and Commission President Daniel Warren.

Stay tuned....

Useful word to add to the "rescue" vocabulary....

Verschlimmbesserung.

Improvements that make things worse.

Pete Seeger's new CD reviewed in NYT

On this the day that we lower upon the shoulders of our children and grandchildren the cost of the mistakes of feckless, free-market, unregulated bucaneros, here's something by a guy who is 89 years old, and a lot smarter than Phil Gramm.

The lyrics of “If It Can’t Be Reduced” are taken verbatim from a resolution passed last year by the city council of Berkeley, Calif.

Its verse goes: “If it can’t be reduced, reused, repaired, rebuilt, refurbished, refinished, resold, recycled or composted, then it should be restricted, redesigned or removed from production.”

I merely pass this on in hopes that the double whammy of Pete and Berkeley induce purple-faced apoplexy in all the Wiggys out there.

Helen Waite now working for Senator Kohl....

Statement of U.S. Senator Russ Feingold

On the Proposed $700 Billion Bailout

September 22, 2008

“I want to get answers to the serious questions about the bailout plan before I decide whether or not to support it. I want to know how the taxpayers’ interests will be protected, what the real cost of the plan could be, if the plan will be funded or just piled on top of our already mountainous debt, if it will include protections to prevent something like this in the future, and if the executives of the companies that are rescued by taxpayers will continue to receive multimillion dollar compensation packages. I recognize that Secretary Paulson and Chairman Bernanke have a tough job, but the administration is asking Congress to provide nearly one-third of the total federal budget to the Treasury Department for this rescue plan. These and other questions need to be answered before we decide whether or not to approve it.”

###

Statement of Senator Herb Kohl on the same issue:




....Still waiting, Herb.



....Still waiting, Senator.



Senator Kohl regrets he's unable to speak today.

We can wait 'til hell freezes. Herb, "Nobody's Senator but yours" Kohl is hiding in the weeds. That slogan of his implies that nobody with a bunch of money can control his thinking, his voting, what he supports and what he condemns.

The only problem with that bold statement of principle and independence is that Herb is totally controlled by a single individual with a whole bunch of money: Himself. And he's a scared little rabbit, hiding in the bushes, quivering, frozen by fear and waiting for hand signals from his accountant.


There used to be a sign on the wall of the place my dad took his clunkers for repair.

If you'd like to discuss delaying payment 'til a more opportune time,
you'll need to see our credit manager, Helen Waite.
Need credit? GO TO HELEN WAITE.

The garage closed, Steve the mechanic retired....And Helen Waite went to work for a Senator.

Oconomowoc Mayor letting us in on the good news he thinks he overheard...

Maury Sullivan, mayor of Oconomowoc, has made comments that are headline news at the Waukesha Freeman:

Target, Kohl’s, among potential Pabst Farms retailers? Sullivan says ‘grapevine’ IDs them; developer claims no tenants signed
By JEFF RUMAGE - GM Today Staff	September 13, 2008

OCONOMOWOC - Mayor Maury Sullivan announced Thursday the names of four potential Pabst Farms Town Centre tenants that he said he heard “through the grapevine.”

At his annual “state of the city” address before Oconomowoc Area Chamber of Commerce members, Sullivan said he has heard Target, Kohl’s, PetSmart and OfficeMax are rumored as potential mall tenants, although Pabst Farms Developments and the town center developer, Developers Diversified Realtors, are keeping the tenants’ identities secret until negotiations are finalized.

Pabst Farms spokesman Thad Nation insists no tenants have signed on to the project.

Cool.

• "...through the grapevine...."
  
  
• "Rumored as potential mall tenants...."
  
  
• "Pabst Farms Development and the town center developer, Developers Diversified Realtors, are keeping the tenants' identities secret...."
  

• "...Pabst Farms and DDR have said the mall will draw a regional base of customers. With Target, Kohl's and Office Max store locations already nearby in Delafield, Sullivan's announcement was not warmly received by Chamber of commerce members".

Meanwhile, in the real world other retailers and mall denizens are making big news, and they're not keeping identities secret:
(as of May, 2008; highly probable that many more have been added to this list in past quarter)

• Ann Taylor is closing 117 stores nationwide.
• Eddie Bauer to close more stores.
• Cache is closing 20 to 23 stores this year.
• Lane Bryant, Fashion Bug, and Catherines are closing 150 stores nationwide.
• Talbots, and J. Jill are closing all 78 of its kids and men’s stores. Now the company says it will close another 22 underperforming stores. The 22 stores will be a mix of Talbots women’s and J.Jill.
• Gap Inc. will be closing 85 stores.
• Foot Locker to close 140 stores.
• Wickes Furniture is going out of business and closing all of its stores.
• Levitz, the furniture retailer, is going out of business and closing all 76 of its stores in December.
• Zales, Piercing Pagoda plans to close 82 stores by July 31. It has also announced that it is closing another 23 underperforming stores.
• The Walt Disney Company subsidiary Children’s Place filed for bankruptcy protection in late March. Walt Disney, in a news release, said it has also obtained the right to close about 98 Disney Stores in the U.S.
• Home Depot has 15 store closings.
• CompUSA clarifies details on its store closings. Any extended warranties purchased for products through CompUSA will be honored by a third-party provider, Assurant Solutions.
• Macy’s is closing 9 stores.
• Movie Gallery is closing 160 stores as part of reorganization plan to exit. They plan to close 400 of 3,500 Movie Gallery and Hollywood Video stores in addition to the 520 locations the video rental chain closed last fall.
• Pacific Sunwear is closing 153 Demostores.
• Pep Boys is closing 33 stores.
• Sprint Nextel is closing 125 retail locations.
• J. C. Penney, Lowe’s, and OfficeDepot are scaling back.
• Ethan Allen Interiors announced plans to close 12 of 300+ stores in an effort to cutcosts.
• Wilsons the Leather Experts is closing 158 stores.
• Sharper Image: The company recently filed for bankruptcy protection and announced that 90 of its 184 stores are closing.
• Bombay Company: The company unveiled plans to close all 384 U.S.-based Bombay Company stores.
• KB Toys posted a list of 356 stores that it is closing around the United States as part of its bankruptcy reorganization.
• Dillard’s plans to close more stores.
• Steve and Barry’s Clothing, which has 240 stores filed for bankruptcy.
• Starbucks is in the process of closing 600 stores.

Sources:

Barbaro, Michael. "Big Retailers Scaling Back Expansion Plans and Shutting Stores."

The New York Times. 2 May 2008.

Kingsbury, Kevin. "Restructuring Charges, Economic Environment Hurt AnnTaylor's Net."

The Wall Street Journal. 22 May 2008.

O'Donnell, Jayne. "Disney to Shutter 98 Stores; Home Depot Closing 15."

USA Today. 1 May 2008.

Associated Press. "Wilsons Leather Closing Stores."

Green Bay Press-Gazette. 16 February 2008.

Dow Jones Newswires. "Foot Locker 1Q Net Falls 82%; Backs Year Forecast."

CNNMoney.com. 22 May 2008.

WHAS-TV [ Louisville]. "Many Stores Closing Due to Retail Slump."

GWB, humanitarian

 

Arrived home after a day of cycling on the Sugar River Trail in Green County: New Glarus...Albany...Brodhead. Then, put on a pot of water to boil bi-color sweet corn (four minutes, not a second more) from a farmstand on the edge of Whitewater.

Life is sweet. And, I am grateful. Everyone on this earth should be so blessed.

Little to be happy about if you live in Cuba...

When Hurricane Gustav blasted across Cuba last week, causing untold destruction, the US offered humanitarian assistance in the amount of $100,000, but with this condition: it had to be distributed by right-wing Cubans on the island, friends of GWB, but opposed to the Cuban government. There would be no aid distributed through the Cuban government.

The Cubans told George W. Bush Thanks-but-no-thanks (roughly translated as "Go furgle yourself and your political conditions", though not in so many words.

Jim Kunstler at Clusterfuck Nation (CFN for those still squeamish about the lingo of disaster)...

....as the vacation season winds down, this country greets a new reality. We miscalculated in Western and Central Asia. Russia still "owns" that part of the world. Are we going to extend our current land wars there into the even more distant and landlocked Stan-nations? At some point, as we face financial and military exhaustion, we have to ask ourselves if we can even successfully evacuate our personnel from the far-flung bases in Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan.

Russia exerts substantial financial leverage over the US in all the dollars and securitized US debt paper it holds. In effect, Russia can shake the US banking system at will now by threatening to dump its dollar holdings.

The American banking system may not need a shove from Russia to fall on its face. It's effectively dead now, just lurching around zombie-like from one loan "window" to the next pretending to "borrow" capital -- while handing over shreds of its moldy clothing as "collateral" to the Federal Reserve. The entire US, beyond the banks, is becoming a land of the walking dead. Business is dying, home-ownership has become a death dance, whole regions are turning into wastelands of "for sale" signs, empty parking lots, vacant buildings, and dashed hopes. And all this beats a path directly to a failure of collective national imagination. We really don't know what's going on.
Read more

Big Changes at Pabst Farms

Here's two photos I took in February, '08, showing--predictably--that things were pretty slow out at the development next to the Interstate.

Anyone wise to real estate and development knows that people don't get into the lot-buying and house-building spirit until Spring.

Surely things would be different when the weather turned warm...


So, now that it's warm and getting toward the end of Summer...things are different....These photos below were taken yesterday.

Top, Lake country Village. The other one is Interlaken, taken in the exact same spots as the previous ones. Beautiful sunny late Summer day.

Growth is bursting out all over. It's gonna be a big year at Pabst Farms, a growth year.

The growth of corn, the growth of soybeans.

Those self-mocking "Coming Soon..." signs have disappeared.

My guess? These development pipe dreams have evaporated. Soon the people of Cooney will begin to wonder when the TIF money will be paid back.

No, Thursday's Out. How about never....?

Olympics in Beijing....Who gives a rip?.

The first Olympics I remember was staged in Rome, in 1960. I was coming up on my senior year of high school, a complete non-jock, non-fan of any competitive sport, aside from Indians baseball and a little Cleveland Barons Hockey.

The evening news on NBC was 15 minutes, split between Chet Huntley and David Brinkley. There was little to learn about the Rome Olympics, though I do remember a certain amount of awed reporting about a Negro boxer from Louisville, Kentucky, named Cassius Marcellus Clay, coming home with a gold medal. It was good news to America.

Only later would that Olympian lose the adulation of Americans by converting to Islam, getting rid of his "slave name," and throwing away his gold medal. Worse...there followed his uttering the famously prosecutable declaration that he wasn't gonna go to Vietnam.

Why? Because "No Vietcong ever called me nigger".

So, tonight they will walk around the track in the biggest venue of the Beijing Olympiad, wearing patently ridiculous matching outfits (Oooohh, those kyoot hats.) in this great festival of competition and brotherhood, and excellence, and striving, and humble acceptance of the laurels awarded to the victors.

I don't want to know who won, who ran, who stumbled, who got interviewed the most, who was most up-close-and-personal. I don't much care about the agony of defeat (Do they still show that hapless--and probably headless-- skier wiping out on the jump?) nor the thrill of victory.

A whole bunch of Olympic athletes are straight arrow, macrobiotic, drug-free, idealistic, hard-working, monomaniacal strivers. To them, I say good luck, and have a good time.

And, then, there's that whole different bunch of them who are juiced on a variety of steroids...and uppers...and downers...and designer cocktails of performance-enhancers...not to mention Bovine Growth Hormone, (the BGH crowd are clearly the greatest performers, though the recurring problem is getting them to come out of the shade to line up for the start). The Olympics has come to signify nothing so much as the pharmaceutical route to glory and bucks.

Who is juiced? Who is going it alone on sheer will and guts and Wheaties? Who is relying on a little help from his/her friends in the laboratory? Who knows?

I don't want to observe the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat, only to learn later that the race was finally decided only after days and weeks and months and years of comparative/competitive urinalysis.

I'm not watching.

And maybe I'll be missing something. Something like the maturation of Muhammad Ali, something like the John Carlos/Tommie Smith declaration from the winners' stand that there are some things even more important than bringing home the Gold and the Bronze, and the Green.

I'll take my chances. Wake me when it's over.

This is War

Howard Schweber, an assistant in the professorial ranks at the U., squeaks and squawks about hair-splitting definitional stuff: primary and secondary boycotts.

Screw that stuff. This is war. WMC and its Board (which once included David Wittwer, President of TDS Metrocom and Cullen, the head of J.P. Cullen & Sons) have a right to organize and spend WMC money and deploy WMC staff to carry out programs and policies and objectives of the group. Both Wittwer and Cullen were members of the Board of Directors of WMC during the run-up to the recent Supreme Court election. They made policy, spent money, hired an executive to carry out those policies using the budgeted money. All part of their war--with other fronts including Annette Ziegler and the attempt to sabotage important elements of the Great Lakes Compact--on us.

Wittwer and Cullen and the rest were not merely a bunch of friends debating issues and issuing white papers, speaking for like-minded right wing guys. They were leaders of a big, powerful, moneyed gang that set out to work against the interests of working people in Wisconsin, that set out to buy a Supreme Court that they could count on to back their political program.

I think I may have been the one to get the "boycott" started last March 13, when I wrote to Wittwer, at TDS. I had been a customer (a very satisfied one, I might add), but I told him I was dumping him and his company. Why? Because he was making policy, spending money, deploying and directing WMC staff to try to stick it to me. Out there in the political arena.

Wittwer wobbled, then caved in-- quit the WMC Board. And I have stayed with him as a customer. Cullen, apparently did the same thing when he got a vaguely similar ultimatum from Epic. I admire Epic CEO Judith Faulkner's delicately stated approach to putting the same shape up or ship out ultimatum to Cullen.

Different style, but we did the same thing. I've talked here in the language of war. In fact, I'm a pacifist--fiercely combative, but a pacifist nonetheless. And, I'm a fairly cooperative anarchist, to boot. When I refer to engaging in "war" I'm talking about doing it within Gandhian precepts. They use thug tactics, we respond with non-cooperation. They act as mercenaries for huge unnamed, out-of-state interests, we call them on this and refuse to patronize their commercial outlets. They do stuff that threatens our livelihoods and freedoms, we squeeze them economically.

But, war it is. And Howard Schweber sits on the sidelines squeaking and squawking and picking nits over the definitions of different kinds of boycotts. No thanks, Howie. We've sifted and winnowed. Now it's time to act.

WMC is waging war on us. They started it; we'll finish it. We'll win.