Blueberries, Good and Bad

Baraboo recently played host to, for lack of a better term, a motivational speaker. Jamie Vollmer, a businessman, who once advocated the “run schools more like a business” approach. Once a critic of public education, and still a critic today. But from a different angle.

Vollmer’s larger points are somewhat contradictory: America’s public schools are doing a great job in tough conditions, and we need to make significant changes to the way our schools do things.

From his website: “The time has come for every school district to organize a community-wide conversation that results in a shared commitment to create public schools that provide a high quality education for all.”

Whatever that means. I don’t mean to be snarky: he does have intelligent things to say. And I join him in his moderate contradiction.

For example, he describes his conversion from critic to, well, different critic, with what he calls “the blueberry story.”

It happened while he was giving a critical (and ill-received) speech to a roomful of teachers:

As soon as I finished, a woman's hand shot up. She appeared polite, pleasant. She was, in fact, a razor-edged, veteran, high school English teacher who had been waiting to unload.

She began quietly. "We are told, sir, that you manage a company that makes good ice cream."

I smugly replied, "Best ice cream in America, Ma'am."

"How nice," she said. "Is it rich and smooth?"

"Sixteen percent butterfat," I crowed.

"Premium ingredients?" she inquired.

"Super-premium! Nothing but Triple A." I was on a roll. I never saw the next line coming.

"Mr. Vollmer," she said, leaning forward with a wicked eyebrow raised to the sky, "when you are standing on your receiving dock and you see an inferior shipment of blueberries arrive, what do you do?"

In the silence of that room, I could hear the trap snap. I knew I was dead meat, but I wasn't going to lie.

"I send them back."

"That's right!" she barked, "and we can never send back our blueberries. We take them big, small, rich, poor, gifted, exceptional, abused, frightened, confident, homeless, rude, and brilliant. We take them with ADHD, junior rheumatoid arthritis, and English as their second language. We take them all! Every one! And that, Mr. Vollmer, is why it's not a business. It's school!"

That’s a great story, and a great point. And it‘s a point I‘ve made before - schools can‘t be expected to do everything. Not when they have zero control over the intelligence, skills, background, home environment of the students.

Public schools offer a lot. Thirteen years (or more) of free (to the student) education, with government-built buildings, books, university-trained professional teachers.

These ingredients aren‘t always Triple-A premium, either, but at least we have more control over them. Not as much as we‘d like, maybe, but more.

I know. The buildings are rotting, textbooks are out of date, and teachers are underpaid. And that’s while we’re spending nearly half of all tax dollars on K-12 education - well over $10,000 per student.

Which brings me to another of Vollmer‘s points - over the decades, we‘ve heaped more and more responsibility onto public schools. We expect more and more from then all the time.

And we‘re getting more and more - that‘s what Vollmer says, and I don‘t disagree. Schools are doing a good job. Not always, of course, and never perfect, but the education is there to be had, with only a small amount of effort on the parts of students and their families.

Do we need to rethink our schools, as Vollmer says?

Maybe. For sure, we need to re-think what we expect from them. Stop expecting them to solve every problem.

I could expand on that, include all of government. No problem too small, no budget too big! There‘s no problem, it seems, that we don‘t expect government to solve. And then we wonder why our taxes are so high.

Public schools - like government - are a tool we have created to do a specific job. We should think of them that way.

Because a government that can give you everything you want can also take away all you have. In fact, a government that can give you all you want has to take everything you have, in order to do so.

The Seemingly Hypocritical Fiscal Conservative Dichotomy

I first noticed this in 2003, while finishing up my one and only term on the Sauk County Board’s finance committee.

Like everyone else in Wisconsin that year, we were trying to tie up a tight budget. Doing our best to cut back, which meant no new positions, and eliminating some existing ones - mostly by 3-2 votes.

Among our decisions: cutting one executive assistant position in the District Attorney’s office, even though we’d left a similar position alone at UW Extension.

This struck me as wrong: surely, the DA’s position was more important. So I asked the committee to revisit that decision - to spend some time making sure we had our priorities straight.

The result: the committee kept both positions, and raised taxes to pay for it. I should have kept my mouth shut.

This is how hard-line fiscal conservatives are born - the hate-government-spending kind, who oppose any spending increase, anytime, anywhere, no matter what it is.

Because you have to oppose everything, if you want to win anything. If we don’t oppose everything, we fear, it undermines our core message: more government spending equals more government power, and more government power is unhealthy for flowers and puppies and other living things.

Fast forward to now, and a new issue: the State Crime Lab.

Ever watch CSI? The crime lab is that bluish-lighted place, where they put on the coats and the glasses to peer at swirling test tubes, then look meaningfully at each other and say “positive.” Except it’s not that quick, not that exciting, and the analysts aren’t that good-looking.

Okay, so I’ve never been to the crime lab myself. Maybe they are that good-looking.

Anyway. The crime lab needs more money. I, as much a fiscal conservative as anyone, say: the crime lab must have more money.

They catch criminals at the crime lab. Dangerous, violent ones. They do this by analyzing itty-bitty bits of material - skin, blood, etc. - found at crime scenes. With that, they determine DNA. With that, we can frequently identify the criminal, and arrest him.

The crime lab can handle about 1,200 cases a year. Since 2004 they’ve gotten more than that. Last year, they got over 2,200.

I know: every government office says they’re overworked. But this is a simple fact: the lab’s caseload has nearly doubled in three years. Criminal cases, which we might be able to solve, are going unsolved.

When the crime lab outsourced 700 cases between 2002 and 2004, they were able to match DNA evidence to over a hundred known felons, whose DNA was already on file.

That’s over a hundred criminals off the streets, crimes solved, community safer, victims having justice.

The current backlog is over 2,000 cases. If the same percentages hold, that’s over 300 criminals who could be identified, arrested, charged, and kept off the streets.

Unfortunately, outsourcing is incredibly expensive and inefficient. So the Attorney General is asking for 31 more analysts - thirty-one new government jobs, and $7.7 million to eliminate the current backlog, and to help prevent another backlog in the future.

The fiscal conservative in me is wrapping himself into contortionous knots, trying to make the need for public protection jive with the need for smaller government. Less government spending. Fewer government jobs.

It’s a gut-wrenching dichotomy. A break in the fiscal conservative dam! And it makes me a hypocrite: oh, sure, when it’s a Republican who wants more spending…

Actually, it’s none of the above. Republicans aren’t anarchists - those are the spoiled liberal college kids who riot at World Trade Organization meetings. Society - particularly a capitalist society - needs a certain amount of order kept. We need some assurance that our property and our lives will be protected, so we can take free part in the free market.

But the largesse of government - no problem too small, no budget too big! - has no end of appetite. Feeding that maw, giving it even one more crumb, goes against the grain.

And yet, public protection is the first duty of government. It’s why government exists in the first place.

So I say pony up. Hire the analysts. Pay the money. And if it hurts our consciences, well, the state budget is right around the corner. We’ll make up for it then.

Partisanship in the Senate

By the time you read this, Wisconsin's State Senate will either have passed the Frankenstein Veto amendment, or not. We either get to vote on it in April, or we don’t.

A recap: the Governor of Wisconsin has the power to veto individual words and parts of sentences to create whole new sentences, whether those sentences have anything to do with anything that was in the bill before.

This power only works on appropriation bills - like the budget, the single most important piece of legislation Wisconsin’s government passes every two years.

That’s the Frankenstein Veto – stitching together the ragged remnants of formerly vibrant living sentences to make new, lumbering, unnaturally powerful ones.

Governor Doyle took this power to whole new heights in the last budget, when he crossed out over 700 words to create a one-sentence, $427 million slush fund for the Department of Administration.

And he got away with it.

If he can do that, he can do anything, so the Legislature began the work of reducing this power, and restoring the balance of power. They got it started last year, with large bipartisan majorities. The Assembly took it further this year, with a large bipartisan majority. The Senate…

…well, the Senate has stuck it in a committee, and they’re not letting it out. If they passed it today, we’ll vote on it in April, and make it part of our Constitution.

If not, well, gotta wait until September, at least.

Why the delay? For the past decade and a half, now-Senate Majority Leader Judy Robson has supported this measure. Ditto Senate President Fred Risser. Ditto Governor Doyle himself.

Today, things are different. Today, Democrats are in charge.

…Robson issued a statement saying that without Gov. Jim Doyle's use of the line item veto in the last budget public education would have lost hundreds of millions of dollars.

"While we're not ready to gauge future prospects for this amendment, the reality of this consequence alone means we have to be deliberate in the process," the statement read.

"It's just not a priority for us," said Josh Wescott, Robson's spokesman.

Robson refused to answer why she voted for the amendment in 1990 under a Republican governor, but is stalling a similar amendment under a Democratic governor.

The ends justify the means.

If I thought she was sincere, I’d be stunned by the shortsightedness. This is small-child blindness – the inability to see past one’s immediate desires. Surely she doesn’t believe we’ll never have a Republican governor again?

Naturally, she’s not sincere. This isn’t blindness. It’s partisanship, pure and simple.

This is an interesting dilemma for Democrats in the Senate. Every first-term Democrat in the Assembly voted yes, change this. The 25 Democrats who voted no are all – with a few possible exceptions – from extremely safe Democrat seats. They risked absolutely nothing by voting no.

First-term legislators are still working on a relationship with their voters. If Senate Democrats continue to stall, Senate Democrat freshmen will find themselves trying to explain why. Over. And over. And over again.

Way to start out on the wrong foot, guys!

This may not be a big deal. It’s early yet, with well over a year before the next election cycle, and more than three years before those first-termers have to face the voters again themselves. Plenty of time.

And they’ll probably still pass it. Eventually. Still. There just isn’t any good reason for the Senate to act this way.

No good answer at all.

In fact, there’s only one answer. Partisanship. Jim Doyle, a Democrat, is in the Governor’s office, and so this is his power to wield. Robson admitted as much: she’s stonewalling because she likes the way Doyle used it. She’s willing to be a hypocrite to let him keep it, at least a little longer.

Could be every word I’ve written here is moot. Could be those first-term and vulnerable Senators have pulled the bill from committee, against their leaders’ wishes, and passed it.

If so, well, don’t I look foolish.

But I can console myself: it could be worse.

I could look like Robson, and Risser, and Doyle.

UPDATE - Geez, the Senate finished up this afternoon, way before I finished this post. To the point: post not moot, I don't look foolish.

Well, maybe I do, but not for the reason I thought I might.

The Democrats' Worldview Exposed

What a difference four years can make. Jim Doyle, back in 2002: I will not raise taxes! I will cut state jobs! Accounting gimmicks are at an end!

The agenda then: hide his liberalism. Make us believe he – and the Democrats – could be conservative, at least on taxes.

Jim Doyle today: higher taxes. Bigger government. Government stretching its power further into private property, and private industry. More government jobs.

Promises from four years ago? Heck, promises from a few months ago. Forgotten.

The liberal worldview is on the march.

If the Democrats get their way, every person in the state will pay more taxes. Lots more, both direct and indirect.

Yes, they’re throwing out a slate of tax cuts, too – highly targeted tax cuts, which will benefit a small number of people and stand a feather’s chance in a hurricane of adding up to the numbers the Democrats claim.

The increases, on the other hand, are either widespread, inflationary, or both.

Want to buy a house? Drive a car? See a doctor? Mow your lawn?

Pay us.

But this budget isn’t simply a collection of tax increases and new spending and campaign payoffs. It’s more. Much more. It’s the liberal worldview, laid out for all to see.

The “sick tax,” for example. A tax on Wisconsin hospitals. The Capitol Times’ Dave Zweifel writes:

He (Doyle) would levy a tax of 1 percent on the revenues of Wisconsin's hospitals to raise an estimated $418 million over the two-year budget cycle.

But, by enacting the tax, it would bring $575 million in matching funds from the federal government. Of that total, the state would return $702 million to state hospitals that treat low-income Medicaid patients.

If that were true, you’d think hospitals would be ecstatic. They’re not. For one thing:

Although the proposed tax could enable the state to receive matching federal funds, the federal government is clamping down on similar programs in other states...

Hey, Democrats, what happens if the feds don’t come through? Repeal the tax?

Sure.

For another: many hospitals don’t serve many Medicaid patients, if any at all. They would see little, if any, of the additional federal dollars.

That’s a tax shift, but no matter. To the bona fide liberal mind, all money is the same. It’s all one big pool of resources, waiting for them – liberals – to use. It belongs to them. To government. To the people who need it.

There is no your money and my money. It’s all our money. And we’re gonna use it the way we see fit.

Next, the new gas tax. The Democrat plan to tax oil companies a buck fifty per barrel, and forbid them from passing that cost on to consumers. If they do, they go to jail!

With this, Democrats are admitting that higher taxes mean higher prices. That would be a victory of sorts, if only they’d learn the right lesson: liberate our disposable income by lowering taxes.

Instead, they see an opportunity to use government power against The Man. Raise prices, go to jail! Why didn’t Nixon think of that?

It’s a great idea. Gas companies will never be able to raise prices. For any reason. If they do, we accuse them of passing on their taxes, and let the warrants fly!

If it works, we can try it out on other businesses, too. Stick it to those job-creating bastards! We can raise taxes, and use the courts! It’s a liberal twofer!

I know what you’re thinking, you corporate-owned conservative tools. Businesses will leave the state, because they’re more interested in their profits than they are in the people’s welfare. No problem. A simple wire fence will do. At first. Then improved wire. Then concrete, and finally reinforced concrete, with guard towers, bunkers, trenches.

In for a penny, in for a pound.

Okay, so that last part’s ridiculous. But the rest of it isn’t. This is liberalism at its most aggressive.

There’s been a lot of kvetching over the last few years, about Republicans forgetting who they are, and why they got elected.

Turns out there’s something else we forgot. What Democrats are like when they’re in power.

Shut Up, and Get Back To Work

Teaching is a respected profession. Even conservatives like me think so.

Teachers themselves – or at least their union reps – might scoff when I say that, since we conservatives also tend to stand in the way of their annual budget and salary requests. But it’s true. Even we evil conservatives thank teachers for the work they do. We respect their role in society. The work they do is important, and it’s not something I’d care to do myself.

Teachers aren’t the only ones who fit that description. Firefighters are widely respected and admired, particularly after 9/11. They run into burning buildings. Toward disasters, while the rest of us are running away.

Police, same thing. They deliberately place themselves in uncomfortable and sometimes dangerous situations, so the rest of us can live in peace. Doctors and nurses, social workers, judges, reporters (yes, reporters) – all these professions are accorded a certain respect.

They don’t deserve it.

It’s not me saying that. It’s Washington Post columnist William Arkin. Why should we have any respect for these people, Arkin asked last month, simply because of their jobs? They get paid, don’t they?

Yes, they do. Not fabulously, but well enough (except for the reporters). And many of them have awesome benefits – the teachers and other government workers, especially.

It’s not like they didn’t know what they were signing up for. Nurses know, generally, what their job entails. Ditto firefighters and police. It’s no secret. They even spend years training for those jobs, and sign contracts agreeing to specific compensation.

So why should we set them on a pedestal? Treat them like they’re something special?

They should be grateful – grateful! – for the support and respect they get, and quit whining when we don’t give them every little thing!

Is that offensive? Insulting? That Washington Post columnist found out: yes. Except he wasn’t writing about teachers or nurses – he was writing about soldiers.

These soldiers should be grateful that the American public, which by all polls overwhelmingly disapproves of the Iraq war and the President's handling of it, do still offer their support to them, and their respect.

…we pay the soldiers a decent wage, take care of their families, provide them with housing and medical care and vast social support systems and ship obscene amenities into the war zone for them, we support them in every possible way, and their attitude is that we should in addition roll over and play dead, defer to the military and the generals and let them fight their war, and give up our rights and responsibilities to speak up because they are above society?

…the recent NBC report is just an ugly reminder of the price we pay for a mercenary - oops sorry, volunteer - force that thinks it is doing the dirty work.

That writer has been roundly pounded since. He’s apologized, sort of, and tried to re-clarify what he meant. So this feels a little like piling on.

But. There are two ways to see this:

You, a soldier, are doing this tough, dangerous, unpalatable thing for me/us/the nation, so we’ll pay you, provide for your family, help you all we can.

Or, hey, we’re paying you, so shut up and do what we’re paying you to do.

The things we respect are a little like good art. Hard to define – there’s no set criteria, but we know it when we see it. Some things simply demand our respect. Even if you oppose the war, you respect the soldiers, the same way you respect the firefighter.

Or you should.

Not all of us do, obviously. Just spend some time googling “don’t support the troops,” and you’ll find plenty of examples: the troops are stupid, or gullible, or immoral.

Still, unless you advocate complete disarmament – unless you believe that even the existence of military force is unnecessary – you have to be glad that somebody’s willing to serve.

Other options exist, but people take on these dangerous, or dirty, or otherwise unpalatable jobs anyway. And they do so voluntarily. As the reaction to Arkin’s column proves, most of us understand that. Some things, we just respect, even when we disagree.

Supply and Demand Works (even for liberals)

What does a movie ticket cost these days? Seven fifty? And at $7.50 per, how often do you go?

How often would you go if it cost $2.50? More, probably. I would. And if that price meant selling four times as many tickets, then theaters would profit more.

What if a ticket cost $15? Sales would plummet. If theaters sold only a third as many tickets, they’d lose money, despite the higher price.

It’s a simple concept in theory: the more expensive a product, the fewer people will buy it. Charge too much, and you might profit less than you would at a lower price.

In theory, it’s simple. Or maybe not. Blogger Louis Kaye writes (emphasis in original):

The reasoning of course is the idea that the taxcuts have, counter-intuitively by the way, produced more revenue for the government – to spend, so therefore we must make them permanent. Now lets turn to the cigarette tax and apply the same logic. Since the Governor implies that the motivation to increase the tax is health based, if he were to cut the current cigarette tax, more people will smoke and the state will collect more revenue – to spend. That's what a tax cut does, according to the GOP.

But instead, the Governor wants to increase the tax, thereby encouraging people to smoke less, and thereby, returning less revenue to the state. That's what a tax increase does, according to the GOP. Well, we know things don’t work that way, but that is what the GOP would want us to believe, so long as its their tax policy.

There are a few fallacies here: we don’t cut taxes so government has more to spend. That’s just a byproduct. And none of this is "according to the GOP." Supply and Demand is settled economic theory.

And, yes, it does work that way.

Some products are more susceptible to price changes than others. Demand might change quickly when it comes to ticket prices, but far more slowly when it comes to gas.

I’d guess cigarettes to be somewhere between movies and gas. They’re addictive, and part of a lifestyle, and kids will still sneak them from Mom‘s purse. And non-smokers aren’t going to pick up the habit just because the price falls.

For another illustration of an inelastic good, we turn to Gregg Easterbrook’s latest “Tuesday Morning Quarterback” (scroll way down):

Economic theory holds that society gets less of whatever it taxes. That's why taxes on income and capital should be as low as possible (so we don't discourage labor or investment) while taxes on pollution and energy use should be as high as possible (we want less of these things). Therefore taxing death is good – we'll get less of it!

Easterbrook is being silly on purpose, of course. Were this true, the death tax would be at least 100%. Probably more. Senior citizens have that kind of pull.

Death is the inelastic good. No matter how much it costs, we’ll still buy it. No matter how cheap, we’ll only buy once. Sooner or later, we all head for the checkout line.

Back to cigarettes. Governor Doyle is counting on supply and demand, or at least says he is. Since people of lower income are more likely to smoke, a drastic increase in price should lower consumption.

If consumption drops by a larger factor than the increase in price, the state will net less revenue. That’s how it works.

Which brings me to tax cuts. Income, one could say, is inelastic . Even if taxes rise - meaning earning a paycheck costs more - most of us are still going to try. Government welfare isn’t that attractive…yet.

Tax cuts mean more disposable income for each of us. Not much, maybe, but even so: even if it’s just $5 a person, in a nation of 300 million people, that’s $1.5 billion.

That’s money we’ll spend or invest. This helps the economy, because as we spend or invest more, businesses earn and grow more.

President Bush cut taxes three times, and revenues grew rapidly. The same thing happened in the 1980s, the 1960s, and the 1920s.

Louis may not believe it. You may not believe it. But that is how it works.

Governor Doyle: Not Smoking

The Governor was clear: you shouldn’t smoke, and he’s going to use the power of government to make sure you agree.

From his State of the State Address: “I am proposing to raise Wisconsin's tobacco tax by $1.25 a pack ... tonight, I am calling for legislation to make all public buildings and workplaces completely smoke-free.”

Interesting verbiage there – “public” buildings and workplaces. That’s going to give him wiggle room later. He’ll say he meant publicly-owned.

Of course, publicly-owned – meaning government – buildings are already smoke free. So he can claim credit later no matter what.

Still, he didn’t have to go as far as he did, increasing the tax more than any other proposal to date, and outlawing smoking in your local tavern. I’ve simply got to ask: what is Doyle thinking?

I mean that literally. What’s he thinking? What motivated him to do this?

Let’s get this out of the way first: he might really believe this is best for Wisconsin. If so, it makes you wonder why he so adamantly opposed raising the cigarette tax before.

Or not. The past few years, there’s been a palpable political disadvantage to raising taxes. After November 7, Doyle and his fellow Dems think it’s safe to go in the water again. Safe to expand government, and use its power to craft society as they want it.

Even if that’s so - even if they do think that - Doyle still would not have proposed anything like this if he didn’t see a distinct political advantage in it.

So where’s the advantage?

Who benefits? Indian casinos. Smugglers and black marketeers. They stand to make a bundle undercutting convenience stores and gas stations. But they – the smugglers and black marketeers, that is – don’t bring much to the table, electorally speaking.

The casinos do. Not many votes, but a whole lotta dollars. This could be payoff for past favors, or for future ones. Doyle’s gotten away with it before.

Or is that too cynical?

The health nannies will be pleased, too. Bar owners, restaurateurs, convenience store and gas station owners won’t. Neither will smokers.

How big is each respective group? I’m just guessing, here, although I think it’s a good guess – I think the second group, the Displeased Group, is bigger. Bigger enough to make an electoral difference in 2010?

By net numbers, maybe not. But. By the next election, one group will have moved on, and the other will still be mad, holding a grudge, ready to fight to get their property rights back.

What’s more likely? That the health nannies will stay fired up enough to raise Doyle’s banner and march en masse for him? That propelling him to victory will remain their top priority, three years after they got everything they wanted?

Or that the smokers and business owners who are losing money to the casinos and the smugglers will smolder for the next three years, and will be pleased to explain their displeasure to their clientele, dwindling though it may be?

People work harder when they’re mad. The second seems more likely.

Now, my assumptions could be wrong. There could be aspects to this that I simply don’t see. The Doyle team could have information that shows people will be more willing to vote for them, even three years from now.

Or, more likely, Doyle doesn’t really intend to get everything he’s proposing.

Getting all of it would rekindle his reputation for kowtowing to the Indian casinos, and would give a large segment of the population reason to be angry - and angrier, as time goes on.

And it wouldn’t bring him any more votes to offset that disadvantage. Even those who agree with him will have moved on. Forgotten, largely – it won’t be a major issue, come 2010.

I think Doyle means to shoot and miss, get credit for trying, give the business owners and smokers time to forget all about it, and leave the nanny lobby angry at those nasty, smelly, Republicans who want everyone to die of lung cancer.

We’ve underestimated Doyle and his political savvy before. Let’s not do it again.

Cheer for Chicago? I think not.

There’s one rule at my house on Superbowl Sunday: don’t get between me and the game.

It’s the last one, see. The very last game. After this Sunday, all we have left to sustain us is the Draft, and that’s not until April.

That’s why I don’t much care for Superbowl parties. Too much talking. Too much socializing. Too many complaints when I get right up on the screen to judge for myself whether the ball came out before the runner’s knee was down or not. And too many questions.

I don’t cotton to neophytes during important football games. I won’t explain why it’s first and ten, even though they got twelve yards on the last play. The time for that was in September. Not during the Superbowl.

So. Now that we have that straight, who are we cheering for this year?

On the one hand, we have the Indianapolis Colts. They of the underhanded midnight flight away from their native Baltimore. Perennial bridesmaids, never the brides.

You have to feel for Indy coach Tony Dungy – sent packing from Tampa Bay in a don’t-let-the-door-hit-you sort of a way and replaced by Jon Gruden, who won it all the very next year with the team Dungy built.

If for no other reason than that, I’d have to cheer for the Colts. And there is another reason

And a good thing, too, because seriously, has there ever been a more innocently aw-shucks annoying public figure than Peyton Manning? Even if you like to watch him play, his endorsement deals are like a mutant fungus – multiplying so quickly, there’s no hope for escape.

Sprint, DirectTV, Reebok, MasterCard, Sony, not to mention the SportsCenter and NFL spots…you can go through an entire commercial break and see nothing but Manning commercials. It’s like the height of campaign season again, but every candidate has a long, geeky neck.

Not that Peyton’s commercials are bad. They’re not – except for that Gatorade ad where they try to make him look tough. Please.

Still. Someone find his agent and say the word “oversaturation.”

No matter. Between the hours of 5:35 pm and…oh, say 9:35 pm Central Time this Sunday, that will all be forgotten. For those four hours, possibly longer, I’m a Colts fan.

Because, well, I said there was another reason. And that reason is: they’re playing the Chicago Bears.

The Chicago Bears. Monsters of the Midway. Traditional bitter enemies of all things Green and Gold.

There’s a lot of history here. The “instant replay” game of 1989 – which the Bears, sore losers that they are, still mark with an asterisk in their record books. William “Refrigerator” Perry’s touchdown run. Charles Martin body slamming Jim McMahon in 1986. The Punky QB. The Superbowl Shuffle.

Chicago’s dominance in the 80s. Green Bay’s dominance in the 90s.

The Packers christened their new City Stadium (later renamed Lambeau Field) in 1957 by beating the Bears 21-17. Two years later, Vince Lombardi began his Green Bay career by shutting them out.

In 1920, in the first ever meeting between the Packers and then-Chicago Staleys (yes, the Staleys), a Chicago lineman threw a blatant and cowardly cheap shot at a Green Bay tackle, breaking his nose. The rivalry was on.

Sure, the Bears compiled a 13-3 record this year, winning homefield advantage throughout the playoffs. Sure, they’ve got a really pretty set of statistics on defense.

They got them by playing one of the weakest schedules in football. Then they let a limpalong Seattle team take them to overtime, and beat a warm-weather dome team in Chicago’s blustery cold.

Big whoop.

Indy, on the other hand, went 4-1 against winning teams this year. Their defense is waxing, and two weeks ago they scored 32 second-half points against the NFL’s second-ranked scoring defense.

The Bears are putrid, their fans obnoxious, their uniforms ugly and their quarterback just one more in a long line of mediocre underachievers who make their fans gaze wistfully and covetously at their betters to the north.

Ironically, they wouldn’t even be where they are if it weren’t for the Pack. Head coach Lovie Smith, upon accepting the job, said his number one goal was to “beat Green Bay.”

So they built a team to do that, and voila! They’re in the Superbowl.

You’re welcome. Go Colts!