Love Train

Oh Wisconsin. I love you so much. It's the kind of love where I want you to be even better than you are because it will be good for you, not because it will be good for me. For what it's worth, Wisconsin, I think a train would have been really, really good for you. Especially a train that went from Chicago to Minneapolis and stopped in Madison. Think of that glittering modern future, laid out on tracks. The movement of people is the movement of ideas, and the movement of ideas is a good way to stimulate a knowledge-based economy. Not to mention ship goods efficiently in an age when oil is increasingly dear (money-wise and environmental-cost-wise). You know, no one outside America really knows Wisconsin? We are a wasteland. North of Chicago, south of Canada. I want everyone to know how lovely you are, how good and caring your people are. Even when sometimes your people are actually a lot like people everywhere - dumb, easily mislead, and yes, sometimes actually selfish and not at all caring.

My 5-year plan, not so much a plan as a "Eureka!' scribbled on a a napkin, includes grad school. Even though I believe firmly in sticking to a thing you love even when it's cranky and run by idiots and not so fun to be around, I've now, today, this minute, decided I am not going to bother applying to Madison. Not even as a "might as well give it a try." I have lived here so long. I am curious about other places. The near future is as good a time as any to seek them out. That's still at least 2012, anyway. Maybe the world will have ended by then, like they say it will.

We live in interesting times, friends.

Forward

Dear blog. I want to talk about politics, I want to talk about poetry, and I want to talk about the things I am doing that are not my job.

There is just too much happening.

I do miss my cat, though.

Also, I kind of want to give Wisconsin a big hug. We'll make it, guys. In one form or another, we'll make it through these politics we do not like, which scare us, which make us clutch our guts in pain at their illogic, and we'll do what we can do limit the damage, and when we get the chance, we'll turn things around in a better direction.

I hold up the hope that the new Republican leadership will somehow stumble upon success by accident, and, worst case, I hope they are somehow right about what will fix this state's economy. Because that's better than them being wrong and all of us suffering for it.

With a big "I am an atheist" disclaimer

So! U.S. Rep John Shimkus, who is vying to lead the House Energy and Commerce Committee next term, is a bible-thumping climate change denier of the first order.

Look! A link to a video! I apologize for the expletives in the subtitles. If you are too lazy, basically he reads a passage or two about the Flood, to the gist of, "After the Flood, God promised there would be no other catastrophes," and says that some religious theorists think the earth is actually carbon-starved, there is no surfeit of carbon.

I don't understand religious people who think that if God has promised them something, it means we as human beings have to do nothing to fulfill that promise.

I realize there is a lot about faith that I was never exposed to. But I also have read enough to know that there are plenty of people who think that even if they've been promised something, they have to WORK for it. And that shall-we-say-God might not say verbatim what will happen, but rather the gist of what will happen. Riddles might be involved. Nothing looks like what it turns out to be. Etc.

And if shall-we-say-God has assured there will be no world-destroying events, perhaps really what shall-we-say-God has said is that human beings are going to pull through with the skin of their teeth because they worked their asses off to keep climate change from getting as terrible as we have heard, over and over again, it has a high likelihood of getting. It seems ridiculous, even if you live in a universe with a conscious, benevolant Creator, to assume that if they have promised you safe passage, you should just go ahead and keep punching holes in your rowboat.

Also, in the passages Shimkus quotes in that video, there's really nothing that says, "Global warming won't seriously screw with the human race." Instead - "Man will not destroy this earth." The big worry about climate change is that we will change the earth so much that it destroys us, and other life. The earth itself will be fine, honeybee.

This week has been like a dream, crawling from one bizarre task to the next. Today I am in a strange city with no time to really explore it, after a long night wandering a hospital, befriending nurses, breathing in time with the beeping of a thousand different machines, trying not to gawk at the neurosurgical patients with wires and tubes streaming from their skulls like futuristic hair.

I want more than anything else to be home in Wisconsin, stirring up the strange brew that our politics have become. I am trying not to be scared about the future, but I am feeling particularly fiercely in love with/loyal to the concept of "a Wisconsin" now that its fate is in the hands of people whose values are not mine. This is probably normal for political losers. I just feel like there's more to hash out, and I feel personally responsible for fixing it all, somehow. This is narcissism, truely, but I'm not alone.

This press pass is already falling apart.

November

I spent my election night at the victory party for the guy whose victory I feared most. Some thoughts on Dane101 today.

Then I went home and said goodbye to an old friend.



I'm a one-cat cat lady now. This was also my first non-goldfish pet death, so I'm wallowing in it a bit. I think burial feels especially grim when you walk away from it with a shovel in one hand and a lantern in the other.

There are good things ahead, though.

Seeing The National play last night was really great. They actually stuck a nice mix of songs from not-High Violet in there, and played nearly all my favorite Boxer songs. R and I both wore oversized hipster-mocking glasses. Saw two people from my 20-person work team, including my mentor. I always manage to be wearing animal hats when I bump into work people.

Good shows make me punchy. I was clutching at my elbows and vibrating in place.

Also, since they played for the Prez "Whoahbama" earlier that night, it's like I didn't even miss much by skipping the rally. Kidding. The lead singer was right, though, when he said they really don't actually have any songs that are political. Still, they dedicated a couple songs "to America." Eyeroll. The Decemberists somehow manage to be more hope-y change-y than them.

Getting tied/forgetting why.

Only liberal sometimes

My married high school friends who just bought a house and made me feel super old had their housewarming party last night. My friend Robin and I had joked that soon all we'd be hearing about would be the home improvements, as that is how we stereotype people who own houses but don't have kids. So I asked Travis about his plans right away. You know, to get it out of the way.

Travis, a former Marine who will happily take the conservative side on some issues where I would not, takes me out to the back yard and says, "See that tree in the corner? Part of it will have to go." I start to flinch in the dark. "That way I can put in a whole row of solar panels. They should catch the sun up until early afternoon."

He goes on with the other solar panels he wants on the other side of the yard, and then talks about selling the excess to MG&E (and if they won't give him a competitive rate, he'll just get himself mostly off the grid) and how he wants to replace all the appliances with more efficient ones. Oh, and then he wants to brick up part of the basement, the part with the weird fireplace, and turn it into a reading room. And if he ever had a load of money, it would be totally sweet to turn another part of the basement into an armory for all his knives.

The way he puts it, while he runs conservative on many things, he'll always be pro-choice, and he knows the country's fucked if we don't start making better choices about energy. Like I told him to his face, I think those are really great priorities if you're only liberal sometimes.

It's really nice to talk to old friends after a long time of not being much in touch and find you haven't both changed so much that you have nothing in common anymore.

The inside scoop on state government

I was on the floor of the Wisconsin State Assembly for about an hour yesterday for a 10-minute ceremony honoring a man whose death was a big loss to Baraboo. Which was lovely, but I should not have worn the shoes I did.

Of the Assembly, I observed --

1. “will convene at 10:30” actually means “will take role once at 10:50 and again at 11 and still say we convened at 10:30 and then introduce a visiting kindergarten class and give someone a plaque and hear a few symbolic resolutions and then break for coffee by 11:45.”
2. Those absent had other representatives asking them to be excused. Like high school when another kid faked a dentist note for you, except representatives don’t need to give an excuse because they are the government.
3. Phones at their desks. One rep gets a call. Laughs, says a few quick words, puts down the phone. Makes a face at another rep across the aisle, who is apparently the caller, because he makes a face back. They clearly have an elaborate inside joke.
4. One very awkward co-ed legislator hug. Like, you could see them calculating exactly how to articulate their joints through the entire process, including precise number of back-pats before withdrawing.
5. One of the reporters who clearly is there often because he has his own seat at the table (I’m guessing Jason Stein) has the same style of notebook that I prefer. Steno rules, guys, because it’s small enough that you can hold it steady while writing standing up, as well as turn pages pretty quickly, AND it fits in my shoulder bag, but it's still big enough that you can fit lots of meeting notes onto each page if you happen to be lucky enough to be writing sitting down. The only downside is you can’t fit it in a back pocket like the "reporter's notebook" style. Yeah, this is boring.

Obama criticizes Republican obstructionist tactics

This is worth spending 90 minutes on, if you're remotely interested in the state of political dialogue in this country. Even if you dislike the two-party system, Democrats or Obama, you don't get to see faceoffs like this very often, especially outside an actual campaign, and Obama's breakdown of some of the rhetorical problems with how elected officials are handling big, important issues...well, as one friend of mine put it, "It was like he tore off one of their arms and beat them with it. Repeatedly."

Not that I wasn't worried about the State of the Union Address potentially bumping OMG LOST SEASON PREMIER on Feb. 2, but I really hope today's reassuring announcement from the White House was did not stem solely from the overwhelming pressure of irate Hurley fans. Because when it comes down to it, that would be bullshit.

Yes yes yes yes

USA lifts HIV 22-year-old travel / immigration ban.

Wanted: Democrat who really, really wants to be governor

It would appear, after what has probably been an anxious month for the Wisconsin Democratic Party (and a gleeful one for the Republicans, if Dave Blaska is any measure...read to the end of that post), that Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett is taking up the boxing gloves for the next gubernatorial election.

Glad as I am to hear that someone is running for Governor on the Democratic ticket, and they're not an 18-year-old McDonald's manager, I am slightly worried about the tone of the Journal-Sentinel article. "inching toward a bid," according to one of his staff. Along with the White House's unofficial endorsement - weeks before he'd even announced a run, while there was still an arguably strong candidate still in the running - and I start to wonder whether he's doing this for his own reasons.

I tend to vote for Democrats, but from this vantage point, Barrett very much gives the impression of someone who's had their arm twisted into running. "Somebody has got to be governor, I suppose I will do it." I don't have much faith in the Republican options, either, but a tepid approach to the Governor's seat is not going to win the hearts and minds of Wisconsin's non-urban residents, Tom. I very much hope for the sake of both his campaign and the state of Wisconsin that he is genuinely interested in serving the people of this state and helping head off a potentially severe budget problem in the years ahead. The Pew study warns that we can expect more cuts to services, and, if the schools situation is any measure, higher property taxes to compensate for cuts to local government, in an economy where more people need services, and fewer people can pay their property taxes. And if that's the case, we're going to need the most dedicated public servants we can get.

Drunk Driving Law: an ounce more prevention please.

I'm very glad to see Wisconsin's drunk driving laws continuing to get attention and, it would appear likely, very tight reforms.

There seem to be good things in both the Assembly and the Senate versions. I absolutely think ignition interlocks - those are the breathalyzers that start your car - should be required for all repeat offenders, as the Assembly has proposed. On the other hand, I also am not sure the Assembly version is strong enough on the penalty side, in making it a felony only if it's the fourth offense within five years. Knowing you risk a felony conviction could be a valuable edge on the deterrence side.

This is, of course, assuming deterrence - in which the rational citizen decides the costs of being caught engaging in the crime are too high and too likely to happen compared to the benefits and likelihood of success - is a meaningful theory of crime prevention. In the case of drunk driving, though, rational decisionmaking is often, guess what!, impaired by alcohol. People who are prone to rational thought plan ahead, of course, and find a DD or a friendly futon. And we should encourage that kind of planning ahead. But for various reasons, some people don't plan, and suddenly it's 3 a.m. and it's really not that far a drive, really, and who wants to pay for parking overnight anyway? Etc.

Furthermore, deterrence as Jeremy Bentham first articulated it relies on "swiftness, severity, and certainty" of punishment, or at least the criminal's perception thereof. And really, it's the "certainty" element we need most. A drunk person might have a vague idea of how "okay" they are, but they won't know their BAC. They won't know exactly where they fall, legally, and chances are they'll think they can handle it anyway. You can have a felony on first offense and twenty years of license revocation, but if a person can drive in a straight line, stop as needed, and stay within 5 mph of the speed limit, chances are they'll get home undetected and try it again the next weekend. We all know it happens. Once someone has been caught once, you can identify them as "trouble" and impose all the limits you like. But you have to catch them first.

Given this, I'd be much happier if we were not quite as focused on taking the people we do catch (and catch and catch and catch) and hitting them harder, maybe spending a lot of money on turning them into felons and making it harder for them to have normal, healthy lives when they're done being felons. Where is the discussion on sobriety checkpoints? Here, I'll start - vehicles may have many of the same qualities as a residence, and absolutely are subject to privacy concerns. But when you drive, you are in the public sphere, you are a public danger, and you are part of the reason driving a car is one of the most dangerous things a person can do in the United States. If a police officer wants to talk to you for a minute to make sure you're capable of driving your death machine (you will read my hyperbole and you will like it) home - and this is ALL they do unless it becomes clear that you are in fact incapable - I say the public interest most likely wins.

While this obviously wouldn't catch everyone, it would at least boost the perception that yes, you can get caught, and yeah buster, you had better make plans to crash somewhere until you're safe to drive. Studies of states where sobriety checkpoints are legal suggest that there is a deterrent effect. If the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control is correct in saying it could be up to 20 percent, then Wisconsin might find a great deal of human savings in instituting such measures. There are other things we can do too, of course. Making bartenders and parking facility employees play nanny, for example. But that would just be more intrusive and, probably, less effective.

On another note, I'm very glad to see treatment getting emphasis in both the Senate and Assembly proposals. I'm speaking as someone who at one point years ago picked up her own [older relative, let us call them Z] from a police station because Z was driving drunk. With a minor on board. For the second time in five years. I saw Z, a generally "upstanding" citizen who had never had other brushes with the law, spend two months in jail, go through treatment for alcoholism and depression, and turn their life around completely. It's true that the jail was probably a big part of the wakeup call for Z, but without the resources to support necessary change, a person can easily succumb to despair. In other words, it's not enough to know you're in trouble; you need to know how you can fix it.

Of course, we would all like to assume that people are good and decent and thoughtful enough to make good intoxicated decisions based solely on how many awful things have happened when people have driven drunk. We've all been inundated with the anecdotes, so I won't repeat them, except to say it hit home especially for me last summer when a high school friend got in the wrong car and paid for it with his life. But if that were the case, we'd also be writing laws that force first offenders to paste photos of DUI-related crash victims to their ignitions and dashboards. And that would never work, right? Right?

the world is big and the words are small

I am probably on the verge of creating a slightly more serious version of this blog to complement the current pastiche of "random things that interest me plus photos of my life," and to focus more on local news. We keep saying at the News Republic that if we don't cover Baraboo things, no one else does, and once I check in on how not to compete with my own paper, I'd like to talk more about what goes on there.

Also, state politics are really pawing at my attention span right now, and I suspect it is going to be quite an eye-opener to be outside the Madison bubble for the next gubernatorial race.
Regard: The Capital Times: Will you be my friend? Gov candidates reach out to voters via social media

Oops! WI Governor uses outlawed veto power, breaks law.

It looks like in all the hurry to strategically veto things from the newly-passed Wisconsin state budget, Jim Doyle forgot(?) he's not as powerful as he used to be. After last cycle's budget, when he selectively deleted words from several items to create new sentences and raise the state property tax by more than 150%, and the previous budget year, when he appropriated millions of dollars from the state transportation fund-- the all-powerful "Frankenstein veto" was finally banned. The veto allowed Wisconsin governors, Democrat and Republican, enormous freedoms in vetoing language from appropriations bills - and often, as a result, creating new items within those bills, with little recourse available for the legislature.

But it's back? The Wisconsin State Journal reports that, albeit in a "minor" policy item, Doyle very clearly used the unconstitutional technique to cancel the creation of a committee to study facilities caring for the mentally retarded. In the post-error scramble, it's not yet clear what will happen to the vetoed item. And it's still not quite clear what happened that led Doyle to do it in the first place. His office blames the need for haste in approving the bill before the July 1st deadline, admittedly admirable given the budget hasn't been on time for years, but isn't it more important that we don't have to go back and fix problems for which we have very little legal precedent?

"Dalai Lama llama llama visa denied duck."*

Dalai Lama ban halts conference

BBC/Reuters - A peace conference for Nobel laureates in South Africa has been postponed indefinitely after Pretoria refused the Dalai Lama a visa, organisers say...

Beijing opposed the planned visit of the
Dalai Lama to South Africa

The government spokesman told Reuters news agency that
the presence of the Dalai Lama risked distracting attention from the World Cup...

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* Natasha Joseph

Life without the Equal Time rule

State-run television stations won't cover launch of opposition party
Nic Dawes, Mail & Guardian

The election manifesto launch this weekend of the Congress of the People will not be televised live by the SABC, the public broadcaster has told Cope.

...

Extensive live coverage of Cope's national convention and subsequent Bloemfontein conference on December 16 drew intense criticism from the ANC, which accused the broadcaster of bias in favour of the breakaway party, hinting that the coverage was the fruit of loyalty at the SABC to former president Thabo Mbeki, many of whose allies are senior figures in Cope. Zikalala is reviled among supporters of Jacob Zuma for his perceived backing of Mbeki.

A source close to Zikalala told the Mail & Guardian he had been instructed by chief executive Gab Mampone to reduce coverage of Cope, following pressure from ANC secretary general Gwede Mantashe.

SABC television would cross live "for five minutes" to the launch, to speak to its reporter there, Xundu told Ngwema.

...

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Is that a splinter in your party, or are you just happy to see me?

I've been asked to blog more about South African politics, because the U.S. presidential race is getting boring. Dudes, I am not surprised. With Barack Obama leading McCain by as much as 17 points in the latest Wisconsin poll, and 20 000 Americans in South Africa getting getting ready to cast their ballots, it is clearly already decided. Or at least beyond the control of anyone except Osama Bin Laden and the please-don't-break-if-I-so-much-as-look-at-you economy. One would like to think.

I'm attempting to summarize a process that I'm learning more about every day, the history of which is complex, and the details of which are different depending on who you talk to. The short story is, since President Mbeki stepped down (not happily), we have had interim president Kgalema Motlanthe running things. There will be elections in April for proportional representation in Parliament. It has been presumed that the ANC, the party that brought down apartheid, will continue to dominate, leading ANC President Jacob Zuma to the Presidency.

Most recently, rumors that the ANC might split into two factions, one loyal to Zuma, one loyal to not-Zuma, have proved accurate: Former ANC chair Mosiuoa Lekota has been condemning the ANC, threatening to leave the ANC, and at last was suspended by the ANC the other day. Lekota has been on the front page pretty much daily, and the question is not so much "Will he start a new party?" as "What the hell is he going to name it?"

The ANC is THE party in South Africa. There are a number of other parties, and in the Western Cape the Democratic Alliance (DA) has enough of a following that its leader, Helen Zille, is mayor of Cape Town. But the ANC is the heart of national politics, and if it splinters significantly enough to draw voters away from the original, things could get interesting. There are plenty of people who consider speech against the ANC to be on the level of treason - The ANC Youth League leader Julius Malema has sworn to "spill blood" for Jacob Zuma, among other very militant promises, and while he may be the most vocal, he's not alone. So, we watch Mr. Lekota, wait for word on those not-quite-finished-yet corruption proceedings against Jacob Zuma, and see what happens next.

sticking out

I spent most of my morning at a primary school today waiting for Desmond Tutu to show up. I'm blatantly, shamelessly name-dropping because oh goodness, I think I am in love with Desmond Tutu after only two short media circuses with him. He very distinctly reminds me of my Polish grandmother. A man with a lot of history who can somehow still make jokes and high five small children and not take himself so seriously except when it would help the right cause for him to do so.

So meanwhile, I'm in an art room with about 30 kids, breathing in rubber cement and glitter, and every other media outlet in town has someone there, too. The kids, who were also waiting for Desmond Tutu to show up, still wanted all our autographs and then presented us with hand-drawn cards thanking us for showing up and being great reporters. Have I said yet that this job is making me reconsider everything I ever imagined about journalism involving chameleon-like anonymity? I'm giving my name and number to as many total strangers as possible, and hoping they remember me long enough to drop a note if anything develops beyond whatever story we were initially talking about. So far, mostly only the wine industry is remembering me and inviting me places and offering me free brandy mixing workshops. I'll tell you about the wine industry another time. Suffice to say, I'm trying to up my ass-kicking, story-pitching moxie quotient so I don't have to spend too many afternoons with press releases and communications officers. The sheer pleasantness of the interviews is enough to make teeth rot, diabetics weep, etc etc.

Back to the kids. Because they're a useful tool for really just saying whatever I feel like saying. When it came out that I was American, some of them wanted to know who I was voting for in November. That's the number one question I get whenever it comes out that I'm American. It's often phrased as, "Are you voting for Obama?" When it's not, it's more like, "So, uh, who are you voting for?" "Barack Obama." "Oh good." Considering recent polls have already found that Obama is the world's preferred US President, I'm not surprised, but it is most certainly strange to be living in such a quasi-idyllic political landscape where no one I know disagrees with my voting choices. I sent my ballot request a little late, maybe, and might have to pull some weird emergency-faxing maneuvers around Halloween, but in the meantime it's easy to be excited about the presidential race from here. Ignoring, you know, the big question of whether anything will actually change beyond our national hopefulness index.

It's a little uncomfortable to be an American; it makes me stick out a little when I'd rather just be some girl living in some city, nothing remotely like a tourist. There is also the issue of money (at R8 per dollar, I actually have it) and the way people here really do care who wins in November. It strikes me as vastly unfair. But I'm saving some of that up for another post. Eventually.

Also for later: Small boy asks me over inkwell, "Why is the news always bad?"

I am also making progress on poems, letters, and Spanish verb flashcards. In case you were waiting to hear about any of those.