Our Endorsement

It should come as no surprise that this proud publication endorses President George W. Bush for re-election Tuesday.

During his first term, Bush proved himself to be a decisive and steadfast leader, who has made incredible strides in combating international terrorism. In my view, he has shown the same fortitude in combating terrorism that Reagan and Thatcher showed in the Cold War – exactly what the world needed after 9/11.

Did Bush lie his way into Iraq? There is no evidence that he did. At worst, he was wrong about the presence of WMD in Iraq, and I have doubts even about that.

There is, however, plenty of evidence that Iraq is headed to a brighter future, that international terrorism has been dealt a severe blow, and that Bush has the fortitude to keep us on the track to a safer, more peaceful world.

Obligatory disclaimer: like everybody else, I’ve got a few problems with the Bush administration. The federal government is spending way too much. The federal government has no business meddling in public education, much less expanding its presence there. And Bush pushed and signed an enormous new entitlement – the prescription drug plan: another expensive and insufficient government “solution.”

But this shouldn’t have been so surprising: President Bush may look like Reagan in international affairs, but his 2000 campaign was anything but Reaganesque. He ran on “compassionate conservatism,” touting domestic policies much like those he has championed since then.

I don’t like it, but Bush made promises (tax cuts!), and then kept them. That should be a mark in his favor.

I also acknowledge that our side has made mistakes in Iraq. That shouldn’t come as any surprise, either.

I can’t point out any specific mistakes, of course, nor can I say what we should have done differently. Why? Two main reasons: one, I’m not privy to the kind of information I would need to make that judgment. I’m not in Iraq, never have been, and probably never will be. I’m not invited to the high-level Pentagon briefings. Nor should I be.

Beware the man who reads the paper and thinks he knows everything.

Two: even if I did have all the information I needed, what, exactly, would I do with it? I am an amateur when it comes to military matters. Could I have done a better job planning the war and the post-war than the 100+ years of experience on the Joint Chiefs of Staff?

No. And neither could any other pundit. Calling for Bush’s defeat based on mistakes in Iraq is both arrogant and ignorant.

Instead of kibitzing, I’ll focus on the big picture: we have to stay the course in Iraq. To do otherwise would be counterproductive both for them and for us.

What else can we expect from a second Bush term? Decisive foreign policy, aggressive safeguarding of our citizens and our interests, and reform of domestic programs.

Bush has already laid out his intention to create an “ownership society.” What’s that mean? Social Security reform, for one thing: personal retirement accounts. Give individuals more of a stake in their own future, instead of encouraging them to depend on ever more expensive and unreliable government programs.

An “ownership society” is a goal worth pursuing. The ability of individuals to achieve for themselves, and thereby create new opportunities for others, is one of the things that made America great in the first place. That attitude should be encouraged, which is the idea behind Bush’s plan.

Bush kept his promises after the first campaign, and after 9/11. That’s why I trust him to keep the promises he’s making today.

And John Kerry? He’s got a plan, right? Lots of them.

In the course of a single, 90-minute debate, Kerry blasted Bush for unilateralism, while swearing his respect for our allies – the same allies he previously called “bribed and coerced.” He then criticized our reliance on allies in Afghanistan. He disparaged Bush’s lack of confidence in the international community, then criticized Bush for wanting multilateral, rather than bilateral talks with North Korea.

Every politician sways with the wind to some degree, but Kerry is a human wind vane. We have no idea what his policies will be, should he be elected. We need strong leadership: Kerry does not offer it.

President Bush has kept his promises, and has been a strong leader when we most needed one. We have every reason to believe that will continue to be the case. I endorse George W. Bush for President.

Plenty of Choice for Socialists

What’s a good Socialist to do?

On one hand, you have the Republican candidate, whose main goal is to make multi-billionaires richer and to support the oppressive corporate regime that lines his own pockets and those of both his masters and his lackeys. He’s out.

On the other hand, you have the Democrat candidate, as sure an example of American aristocracy as ever existed in our political history. Sure, he’s saying some of the right things. “Tax cuts for the rich,” and “Benedict Arnold CEOs,” for example. But what about his opposition to outsourcing? Trying to keep the global proletariat down and slaving away for scraps from our table, while we hoard all the wealth and good-paying jobs for ourselves? Clearly, the Democrat doesn’t get it, either.

Luckily, those who cheer both for the Marxist Dialectic and the Green Bay Packers have other choices. Two other choices, or perhaps even three.

This year’s Wisconsin ballot includes no fewer than seven candidates for President and Vice President, including two different Socialist parties – the U.S. Socialist Party, and the Socialist Workers Party.

I suppose somebody should tell them they’re only hurting their chances by splitting the Socialist vote that way, but it’s too late for that this year. The ballots are already printed.

The Socialist Workers Party (SPW) began as a wing of the U.S. Communist Party, but split with them in the 1930s and briefly joined the U.S. Socialist Party, before being kicked out and going their own way.

What’s the difference between them? Heck if I know. The split had to do with “questions such as the class nature of the Russian state and Marxist philosophy” and “what position the party should adopt in the so called Winter War between Finland and the USSR.”

The SWP is running James Harris and Margaret Thowe for President and Vice President – except that they’re really not. Their real nominees are Roger Calero and Arrin Hawkins. Calero is both a convicted felon and a non-citizen (he’s a green-card-carrying Nicaraguan). Arrin Hawkins is too young to qualify for V.P. Wisconsin wouldn’t accept them as candidates, so the SWP is offering Harris and Thowe – their nominees of four years ago – as “surrogates.”

That’s the kind of dysfunctionality you really like in a political party.

The U.S. Socialist Party (SPUSA) has no such problems. Their ticket consists of Walter Brown, and Mary Alice Herbert. You can read much more about them on their official website:

Socialism is not mere government ownership, a welfare state, or a repressive bureaucracy. Socialism is a new social and economic order in which workers and consumers control production and community residents control their neighborhoods, homes, and schools. The production of society is used for the benefit of all humanity, not for the private profit of a few. Socialism produces a constantly renewed future by not plundering the resources of the earth.

Sounds like a lot of foolishness to me, but what do I know? I’m a dedicated capitalist.

Brown is a former Oregon state senator (elected as a Democrat), founder of the Socialist Party of Oregon, and a three-time candidate for Congress under the Socialist banner. Herbert is a retired schoolteacher from Vermont, who once ran under a third-party label against Howard Dean.

And, if neither of those parties appeal, there is always the Ralph Nader Party – actually the “Better Life” party, as he’s listed on the Wisconsin ballot.

Nader himself has no Socialist credentials – no official ones, anyway – but his running mate, Peter Miguel Camejo, does. Best known today for his third-place finish as a Green in California’s recent recall election, Camejo has a long history with Socialist politics.

Camejo was 1976 Presidential nominee of Socialist Workers Party -- a militant, Trotskyist communist party. He won ballot status in 30 states and captured 90,000 votes. Since then, his strident leftist views have evolved into the democratic socialism of the Green Party that he now espouses.

More intriguing, Camejo has turned his environmentalist politics into a successful moneymaking operation:

He also became a successful financial executive as chair and co-founder of Progressive Asset Management, a broker-dealer firm which promotes "socially responsible investments." Camejo also created the Eco-Logical Trust for Merrill Lynch, the first environmentally-screened fund of a major firm.

That’s commendable, making a buck while remaining true to one’s ideals, but it also indicates an unfortunate cave to the temptations of capitalism, which may scare off the pure Socialist voter.

It will be interesting to see, if Bush wins Wisconsin by a narrow margin, how many voters these alternate parties peeled away.

It's Much Too Easy to Vote

I voted the other day.

I didn’t want to vote early: I like going to the polls. But, I expect to be busy on Election Day this year, so I went down to the City Clerk’s office, and voted absentee.

It was a surprising experience. It was easy. Almost too easy.

After explaining what I wanted, I was handed an absentee ballot application. This took about a minute to fill out, and the clerk handed me a ballot. The voting booth was right there. My ballot went into an envelope, which I signed, and that was that.

Something was missing, and I knew what it was. I never had to prove my identity.

I should note that I live in Baraboo. This is a small town, where people get to know you. I knew the clerk, and she knew me. She didn’t need me to prove who I was.

And in fact, the law doesn’t require her to. If I understand the election rules, the only time ID of any kind is required is the first time you vote in a particular district.

Even when proof is required, a photo ID is only one of many options: a utility bill with your name and address on it is good enough for the law. If you haven’t got that, another voter can confirm your identity.

Here’s the scenario I’m considering: it’s Election Day. My wife and I pack up the kids, haul them to the polling place, and get in line to vote.

We reach the front of the line, give our names, and…we’ve already voted. Somebody has already cast a ballot, claiming to be me.

Now, in my case, this wouldn’t happen. All the little old ladies who work my polling place know me on sight. They would catch it, if somebody tried this.

Every place, though, isn’t like Baraboo. Some polling places deal with several times the number of voters mine does. And even in little towns, we shouldn’t depend on poll workers to visually recognize every single voter.

That’s particularly true, if the fraudulent vote is cast by absentee. Remember, unless it’s the first time a voter is voting in this district, ID is never required. It would take little effort to obtain dozens, or even hundreds of absentee ballots, fill them out, and use them.

Am I being paranoid? Perhaps. But I don’t think so. Reports of possible fraud are already piling up. I have little doubt that there are people both willing and able to pull this off.

And there’s only one way to fight it: make it harder to vote.

Unfortunately, that’s not going to happen. Last year, the state legislature tried to require photo ID for every vote. Governor Doyle vetoed it. Here’s his explanation:

…approximately 123,000 Wisconsin residents of voting age do not have a valid DOT-issued driver's license or photo identification card. Nearly 70 percent of these individuals, or 85,000 Wisconsin residents, are elderly voters that would be disenfranchised by AB 111. Many others are young people, often students, who have never had a driver's license or valid Wisconsin photo identification card. Furthermore, many of the individuals who would be disenfranchised by this bill live in poverty, are members of minority communities, frequently change address, or are disabled. I will not sign into law a piece of legislation that would strip the right to vote away from the elderly, minorities, students, the disabled, the transient, and the poor.

A nice bit of rhetoric, sure, but missing one key piece of information: why don’t these people have an ID? Perhaps, because they haven’t needed one.

Can’t they go get one? For most of those 123,000, the answer is surely yes. Being elderly doesn’t make you incompetent. For the rest, well, considering the effort being put into voter registration this year, I’m sure rides to the appropriate office will be readily available.

In any case, requiring an ID doesn’t “strip the right to vote” from anyone, any more than it “strips the right” to rent a video.

In fact, it does the opposite. If your vote is stolen by a fraudulent absentee ballot, have you not been disenfranchised? If you vote for one candidate, and your vote is cancelled out by a fraudulent ballot for the other candidate, have you not been disenfranchised?

Yes, you have.

Voter fraud is a problem we’ll have to face, sooner or later, and there’s only one real way to do that: somehow, make it a little bit harder to vote.

Blazing Saddles: A Parent's Handbook

Funny where you can find life lessons, when you really need to. Even in a Mel Brooks flick.

Blazing Saddles is one of my favorite movies: in my top 10, if not my top 5. So you can imagine how excited I was to get the DVD for my birthday.

I wanted to watch it sometime when we could all sit down together – the kids, too. Sure, it’s vulgar, but hey, this is a comedy classic. Even Shakespeare talked about sex. Should I banish him from their reading lists?

Bring the kids up right, or don’t bring them up at all, I say.

Still, my modern parental instincts were in warning mode. Every parent knows that kids will repeat and/or try every single thing they see on a TV screen. I’m fairly certain I could be accused of participating in the delinquency of a minor, should any of my kids re-enact certain parts of this movie.

So, I warned the kids up front. Told them they would hear a lot of unrepeatable words. Brandished my whoopin’ stick, that sort of thing.

They understood. And we sat down to watch. And guess what? A life lesson emerged.

The movie’s protagonist is an ex-slave named Bart, who, after hitting his racist boss with a shovel, finds himself in a long line, waiting to be hung.

Meanwhile, Hedley (not Hedy!) Lamarr, the Territorial Governor’s right hand man, needs to appoint a new sheriff for the town of Rock Ridge, the last one having been killed by a band of plains marauders.

Little do the peaceful folk of Rock Ridge know, the marauders are the same guys Lamarr hired to build the railroad. Once the railroad goes through Rock Ridge, the land will be incredibly valuable, so Lamarr wants to chase the townsfolk out.

In a stroke of brilliance, Lamarr yanks Bart from the gallows and names him the new Sheriff, knowing that the townsfolk will reject him, (“Can’t you see that that man is a ni?”) and thus be left unprotected.

It almost works. Upon his arrival in Rock Ridge, Bart narrowly avoids being lynched. He makes an attempt to be friendly, and is crudely rebuffed by a sweet little old lady. He is, to be kind, disliked.

Then a bad guy, Mongo, comes to town, and suddenly Bart is needed.

Defeating Mongo brings an underground acceptance, but Bart still can’t show his face in the daylight. As time goes on, though, he uncovers Lamarr’s plot, and by the end of the movie the townsfolk are accepting not just him, but even all of his former railroad fellows – black, Chinese, even Irish.

To me, the central moment of this movie was when Bart first rode up to Rock Ridge. Why, I wondered, did he bother? From nothing, suddenly he owned a horse, a gun, some nice clothes. Riches, and the means to get more. He could simply have run away.

And don’t give me that stuff about getting caught. This was the wild, wild West. Even today, we can’t find bail jumpers.

Why did he stick around, when the townsfolk so clearly hated him? And not only did he stay: several times he risked his own life to – what?

To do his job.

Yes, I know I’m reading way too much into this. It’s just a parody, done in classic Mel Brooks style: nothing is ever too goofy.

And yet, I saw a way to turn this crass spoof into a good reason for a parent to let his kids watch it. The lesson: there are jerks in the world. I could use stronger language, but that’s the point. Some people are just jerks.

It’s true in the schoolyard. Some kids are going to be mean to other kids. It’s true in grown-up-land, too. Office politics, gossipy neighbors. There are bullies in every walk and stage of life. There is adversity in every stage of life. Things are never easy.

The question is, do we allow the actions of others to decide what our actions will be? Or do we do what we think is right, even knowing that others will disagree with us, dislike us, slander us, try to do us harm for it?

Bart didn’t: he kept on playing the hero, doing the right thing, even though others gave him every reason to do the opposite.

There’s something in there for all of us, I think. Or at least for a dad who wants to watch a movie without feeling guilty.

Cooperation, Self-Interest: Same Thing

I’ve sometimes marveled at the level of cooperation that exists in our society.

I remember the first time this occurred to me: it was at a four-way stop sign. I pulled up, waited for the van ahead of me to go, then took my place at the intersection, waited again for two vehicles on the cross street, and the oncoming car turning left in front of me. Then, the others all waited for me, as I drove through.

Man, I thought. That’s cooperation. That’s teamwork, and it’s happening every day, a dozen times per person, all across the country. We cooperate with people we’ve never seen before, and will never see again.

Sure, there is the occasional jerk who cuts you off, or who won’t let you merge, or who drives drunk. But the vast majority of the time, we’re taking care of each other out there.

Then I realized: sure, we’re cooperating, but not out of altruism. No, we’re cooperating because of good old-fashioned self-interest.

I could have simply rolled through the stop sign, if I’d chosen to. And what would have happened? Probably nothing: the other cars were hardly moving, and would have stopped in plenty of time to give me the one-finger salute.

Or, maybe not. Fender bender, and my fault – hello thousand-dollar repair bill and higher insurance premiums. Or, maybe a cop sees me. Ticket, couple hundred bucks, which I then have to go home and explain to my wife.

Rather than an example of community-minded teamwork, our traffic system turns out to be a perfect example of simple, individual self-interest, which makes a vast, complex, interconnected environment work.

There are lots of similar examples in the world. Do bees know they’re helping make flowers? No, they’re just trying to store up some food. Self interest.

The owner of a snack food manufacturing company decides to open a second location. Is he thinking about that decision’s effect on the broader economy? The new jobs, increased demand for labor and for raw materials, new business for his suppliers, and more work for the trucking companies?

Or is he just trying to line his own pockets?

I’ll bet on the latter. Still, by his actions, selfishly motivated as they may be, he has a positive effect on the economy and on other people.

A small, independent hardware store goes out of business a year after Wal Mart opens a location in the same town. It’s too bad, for the owners and for the community. Yet, there’s a reason it happened: Wal Mart’s prices are lower, so people choose to shop there. For the price of duct tape at the smaller store, customers can get that and a box of donuts at the Wal Mart.

That’s increased purchasing power: increased wealth. It spreads more money around to more providers: both the duct tape supplier and the baked goods supplier made money, whereas before, only one of them would have.

I don’t intend to argue that the free market always results in fairness to each individual. It doesn’t. We all know it. There’s no point in saying otherwise.

More, I’ve argued in the past that the benefits of the free market are largely hypothetical. You can’t go to a guy who just lost his job and tell him it’s all for the best, if he would only look at the big picture. Not even if you’re right. The image of the closed storefront and the laid-off factory worker are far more poignant than charts and graphs of economic activity.

The free market means both ups and downs, individually and collectively. Sometimes you lose a job, you lose business to somebody else, you have to work a couple more years because a recession ate into your retirement fund. It stinks. That’s life.

But what’s the alternative? Impose minimum prices, to protect that independent business? Impose penalties on businesses that cut jobs?

Businesses make the decisions they think are best for them. If they’re wrong, their customers let them know, but going to other businesses. It’s a self-policing system already, without more government.

Besides, more regulation makes for good politics, but bad policy. European governments take a much more active role in regulating their economies. Unemployment there hasn’t dipped below 8.5% in over three years.

In business, like in driving, there has to be some framework of rules, but those rules have to allow us to get where we want to go. Too many stop signs, and people will choose some other road.

Bumper Sticker Blather

I love bumper stickers. I think they prove that “brevity is the soul of wit,” and I find myself revisiting the really good ones, the ones that catch my imagination, over and over again.

I ran across one of those just yesterday. The driver was a young woman – could have been a college student – in what looked like a hatchback from the early 1990s.

The bumper sticker said: “Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich.”

Ah, I thought. A gratuitous swipe at both organized religion and the rich, both at the same time, and with enough brevity to fit on a bumper in print large enough to read without risking a fender-bender. Genius.

But that was only my first thought. The best bumper stickers require second, even third thoughts. This was one of those.

Why, I quickly wondered, does this person have such a low regard for the poor? She must: she apparently believes the poor are inherently murderous – so violent that they require ancient and massive organizations in order to restrain their otherwise uncontrollable rage.

What if organized religion didn’t exist? Would the rich be forced to hide behind electrified fences and paid security forces? Or would the irresistible force of the Marxist dialectic wash over the existing economic structure, like it did in soon-to-be-Communist Russia in 1919?

What would she say, I wondered, if I were to ask her that? Probably something about it being “just a metaphor.”

But, I thought then, perhaps I’m being too hard on her.

After all, the poor have legitimate grievances against the rich and the system the rich have established to keep themselves rich and everybody else poor. There are “root causes,” which means the poor can be excused for going against social mores now and then. They’re poor, you see. It’s stressful.

Yet, because of their adherence to religious teachings, they hold back.

This speaks very well of the poor – to have every reason for violence, and yet to abstain from it.

Perhaps she doesn’t have anything against the poor. In fact, she could be expressing respect for their religion and their adherence to its teachings.

I wonder: if religion is the only thing keeping the poor from expressing their otherwise murderous tendencies, then are all atheists rich?

From that point, I realized I was thinking only of Christian belief – not a bad assumption, in this country, but the bumper sticker said “religion,” not “Christian belief.” So she was obviously including the followers of other religions in her statement, too.

But wait – she couldn’t mean Islam, could she? After all, why do they hate us? The institutional poverty of Muslim countries, compared to the Judeo-Christian nations of the West – the “root cause” of international terrorism. If that’s true, then religion is most certainly not preventing the poor from murdering the rich. On the contrary: it’s providing an excuse to do so.

And what about the rich people? If religion prevents poor-on-rich homicide, what keeps the rich from killing the poor, or each other? Is she saying the rich don’t need organized religion to tell them that murder, however excusable or well intentioned, is counterproductive, while the poor need religion to restrain them?

If so, she’s painting the poor with a very broad and unattractive brush.

But, no, this young woman, probably a student on a liberal college campus, wouldn’t bash the poor. She must be going after the rich.

The poor, you see, are restrained by their belief in a higher power – a higher power that also teaches modesty, humility, charity. That there are much more important things in life than money and material possessions.

What do we know for sure about the rich? They have lots of money and material possessions. Therefore, they don’t follow the same philosophy as the poor, and thus don’t have the same moral quandary about killing others.

This would, of course, be right in line with leftist complaints about our “war for oil,” for example. Rich oil companies got Bush and Cheney elected so that Halliburton could take over Iraq and thereby enrich itself on Iraqi oil. If people got killed in the process, so be it.

How lucky for the rich, that organized religion exists to protect them.

Or, how foresighted of them, to have created organized religion in the first place. Give the masses something else to content them, besides wealth. Keeps them happy. Keeps them in line.

Say, how rich do I have to be to get in on that?

Shameful Profits

The states of Wisconsin and Illinois have joined forces in the battle against prescription drug costs.

A new service, called I-SaveRX, will let residents shop at 45 “inspected and approved pharmacies and wholesalers in Canada, the United Kingdom, and Ireland.” Other states are being invited to take part, too.

The idea, of course, is to give people another option in buying their prescription drugs. Maybe they’ll save some money.

As a political issue, I fail to see a down side. Eighty percent of Wisconsin residents believe we should be able to buy drugs in Canada, according to a recent poll. The effects of rising drug costs are real, and amplified by the fact that those who need multiple prescriptions are also likely to be living on fixed incomes.

Couple that with the illegality of importing drugs from other countries, though, and I think we see this for what it really is: an attempt to goad the Bush administration into doing something unpopular.

That’s because, as a practical issue, the whole thing is a wash. Long-term, it’s no solution.

Should I care about this? I find it hard to. If somebody wants to go to Canada for their prescription drugs, why shouldn’t they? It’s their money. It’s their lives. It’s not my business. Should I care if someone goes to England for tea, or to Ireland for whiskey?

Note, of course, that there is some concern about safety. Be warned, and make an informed choice.

Note also the reason drugs are cheaper in Canada: because the government sets an artificial limit on prices.

If more and more Americans start turning to Canada for drugs, demand in that country will rise accordingly. Because the profit margin for drug companies is lower, they have less incentive to provide the larger amounts of product that will be needed, so supply will not rise to meet that demand.

I wonder how long Canadian authorities will put up with that?

Because, sure as moose droppings freeze in October, drug manufacturers aren’t going to mindlessly comply, and continue supplying more and more of their product at profitless prices.

Cold-hearted of them, isn’t it? Billion-dollar drug companies demanding a profit from silver-haired grandmothers who need those drugs to maintain their quality of life, or in some cases, to maintain life itself.

I’m a big believer in capitalism. I trust the free market. But common decency says there are some things more important than profit. Making sure people have the basic necessities should be one of those things.

Food, for example.

What is a more basic necessity than food? You can’t live on your prescription drugs, you know. Not enough calorie content. If you don’t have enough food to eat, you’ll quickly forget about needing medicine.

So why, then, do we put up with farmers who constantly insist on making a profit? Can’t they see they’re just inflating the price for the end consumer, making it harder to put food on the table?

Okay, there are lots of small farmers who are just barely making ends meet themselves. I shouldn’t pick on them.

So how about the supermarkets, then? Aren’t they making big profits from marketing a basic necessity? How much money has Herb Kohl taken out of the pockets of seniors, living on fixed incomes, who can’t afford to replace a tattered pair of shoes because food prices are so high?

While we’re on this tangent, isn’t it unseemly for public school teachers to complain about pay? A good education is, after all, a basic necessity in our society. As Governor Doyle put it at a teacher’s convention in 2003, “You are doing the most important job of anyone in the state of Wisconsin. Our future, our economy depends on you. Our democracy depends on you."

So much depending on it, yet making a bigger profit remains a top issue for the union.

Again, okay, teachers aren’t getting rich, like big time drug company CEOs. So how about the publishing companies that produce the textbooks? That’s big business. How about the construction companies that build new schools? Awful lot of money in that. How about the banks that issue the bonds that pay for that construction? Are they sleeping well at night, knowing they’re making a profit from a basic human necessity?

Food. School. Medicine. Big Grocery. Big Construction. Big Financial. Big Pharmaceutical.

So many people, making money from basic human necessities.

They ought to be ashamed.

The Tax Quagmire

What can we do about taxes in Wisconsin? Other than just throw our hands up in despair, I mean.

We’ve all heard the statistics. Since 1970, Wisconsin has not ranked lower than 9th nationally in state and local taxes as a percentage of income. In the 26 years between Nixon’s resignation and Y2K, government spending in Wisconsin has grown from 17% to 21% of personal income.

Crunch the numbers however you want. There’s still no denying that taxes are taking up a larger and larger share of our income.

And there’s just nothing we can do about it, or so it seems.

For example, last week I asked whether I’d have to say something nice about the Sauk County finance committee. After all, they did what I asked them to do: they kept the county’s spending down to a very reasonable 4.3% increase.

Because overall property values grew nearly 10% (as the county calculates it), that means the tax rate will go down. This is good news – somebody did something about taxes.

Sure, the full Board could vote to spend more – there may well be a push to inflate the county’s budget just in case the state enacts a property tax freeze or the Taxpayer Bill of Rights.

Plus, county taxes only make up about a quarter of the total property tax bill – the city and school board still have to weigh in with their budgets.

And, oh yeah, assessments are up. Way up. Nearly 30%, average, in the City of Baraboo. So even if every local government keeps their spending down, taxes are going to take a much bigger bite out of everyone next year.

Did the cost of services grow 20% or 30% this year? No. But, even after taking the county’s tax rate into account, the average county tax bill will grow more than 20%, because of the reassessment.

It’s taxation through stealth technology.

Who do we blame? The city takes the heat for assessments – if you want to complain or challenge, you call City Hall.

But the state requires the assessments in the first place – state law requires that all property be assessed to within 10% of fair market value, at least once every 5 years.

There is, unfortunately, good reason for that.

If regular assessments weren’t required, the City of Baraboo could just stop reassessing – let everybody else’s assessments rise, while ours stay the same. It would keep homeowners happy, keep tax rates down relative to nearby communities, and would provide an incentive for others to buy property here.

If other communities followed suit, well, so much the better, right? If local government needs more tax money, they’ll just have to raise the rates, which is harder for them to do.

What’s so bad about that? New homes would be assessed at much higher values than comparable but older homes, for one thing. That’s a disincentive to build new, and the discrepancy would only get bigger over time.

So you’ve got to reassess, regularly and as uniformly as possible. Can’t blame the state for that, but does that mean we just have to live with it?

In Europe, maybe it would, but this is the United States, where we’re supposed to be in charge of our own government. We’re supposed to be able to change things – not just throw our hands in the air because they’re unchangeable.

If anything deserves to be changed, it’s this. Assessments are to property taxes what a bigger salary is to income taxes: when your salary goes up, you also pay more taxes, especially when you bump up a bracket.

Now, property has value, but it’s not a liquid asset. If your salary goes up 20%, then you’ve got that much more cash to pay the resulting tax increase. If your assessment goes up 20%, you get the tax increase, without the enhanced ability to pay.

This is the major difference between the property tax and other sources of taxation – ability to pay. The income and sales taxes naturally take that into account. The property tax doesn’t.

Am I suggesting we get rid of the property tax entirely? I don’t know. There is something to be said for having multiple streams of government revenue – kind of like diversifying your portfolio.

But tax bills continue to grow faster than we can pay them, and our elected representatives seem powerless to stop it. There has to be something more we can do. Other than throw our hands in the air.

Kerry Won...For Now

Four years ago, I thought my guy had blown it.

I’d just finished watching the first debate between Vice President Al Gore, and the Governor of Texas, George W. Bush.

I thought Gore was polished, prepared, with facts at his command. I thought Bush was bumbling, stuttering, with a few prepared statements and little else. I thought the debate would put Gore over the top, and leave him there.

I paced my living room floor for most of the second half of the debate, exasperated, occasionally yelling at the TV.

My wife disagreed. She thought Bush’s manner was far more appealing than Gore’s. She thought Bush looked much more like a real person, instead of a polished, practiced politician.

After a few days, it became clear: she was right and I was wrong. And I’m the political expert in our house.

As it turned out, people didn’t like the way Gore acted. He was arrogant, overbearing. He sighed loudly into the microphone when Bush was speaking (which I noticed, but dismissed – didn’t think it was important).

Then, the factual errors began to come out. There was that story about the schoolgirl who had to stand in class because the classes were so crowded. The local school administrator said, well, no, we’ve got plenty of seats. There was the story about him visiting Texas after a natural disaster there. Nope. He made that up.

All in all, it turned out to be a big win for the future president, and never mind what I thought.

Today, 24 hours after the first debate of the 2004 presidential election, I feel the same way I did after the first debate of the 2000 election. I think Kerry was forceful, confident, with facts at his command, while Bush bumbled, repeated the same memorized phrases over and over again, and sounded defensive, even whiny at times.

Unfortunately, my wife didn’t get to watch it, so right now I'm not sure what I should think. But, from perusing various corners of the Internet, I get the feeling I’m making the same mistake I made last time.

Plus, I’ll bet the fact-checkers and political spinmeisters were already having a field day with some of Kerry’s comments, even before the debate was over.

For example, we already know his claim about the subways closing down for the Republican Convention in New York is false (like New Yorkers would put up with that, anyway). And General Tommy Franks is already disputing Kerry’s claims about Tora Bora, and that resources were shifted from Afghanistan to Iraq against his wishes.

Is there more? Maybe. I can’t quite believe Kerry wouldn’t have learned from Gore’s mistakes, but I’m curious about that visit to Moscow he mentioned, “after the transformation,” visiting the KGB offices.

Then there’s his claim that parents are having to buy protective equipment online for their kid/soldiers, serving overseas. Is it true? And are we talking about front-line combat troops, or rear-echelon supply guys?

And, if it is true, how can Kerry defend his support of even lower levels of funding?

That will all be interesting, and I’m sure we’ll hear more about it soon. But the best parts of Kerry’s performance – we’ll see those in Bush campaign commercials, very, very soon.

One of my favorites: “Kofi Annan offered help after Baghdad fell. And we never picked him up on that and did what was necessary to transfer authority and to transfer reconstruction.”

Cut to announcer: “John Kerry wants to transfer command of our troops in Iraq to the UN.”

But Kerry’s best line, by far, was this one: “My position has been consistent.”

I did a double take. Did he really say that? Yes, he did. Twice. And then he said, “I’ve never wavered in my life.”

I could hear the Bush campaign cheer. I felt the ground shake as they danced around the television, mentally interspersing those video clips with the multitudes of conflicting statements Kerry has made over the course of the campaign and before.

Heck, even I could write that commercial.

So, sure, I came away from the debate thinking the other guy won it. I worried a little, about the fallout.

But if 2000 taught me one thing, it’s that I can’t rely on my own first impressions, or those of the pundits: either the traditional media or the barely-walking blogosphere.

It will be a few days before we can really see how the fallout falls, before we really know what happened. And this year, I can’t wait.