In honor of the first meeting of the appointed RTA board last week I thought I would kick off my first post of the month related to that subject.  Before that though, I have to say that it is embarrassing that I haven’t had time to write nearly as much as I would have liked recently.  However, I am happily volunteering that time instead to help with the upcoming County Board Supervisor elections on April 6^th.  There are a great number of good candidates running in districts all across the county and I had hoped to write more about them here – but I digress.

Back to that unelected, appointed RTA board.  In addition to the first meeting of the unelected, appointed RTA board, what also got my interest peaked in this issue again was a post on the Progressive Dane website (www.prodane.org).  They’ve got their eyes on the unelected, appointed RTA board as well.  Remember how we’ve been told the RTA isn’t just about putting a train across Madison?  If Progressive Dane had their way it would be the first and foremost thing this appointed board does.  Next priority?  More bike paths so people can ride their bikes to… wait for it… the train.  In their words, these are two very important characteristics of what makes “fully functioning RTA”.  Important enough to make these points the first two things they mention.  Trains and bikes.  Bus service is mentioned too but way down at the fourth position (after we make sure we subsidize riding the train). 

Interestingly, the very last point, which seems like it was added as an afterthought to me, says it would be nice if the RTA could help people get to places employment too.  Consider how upside down those priorities are.  First, we need a train and the train must go from A to B to C.  Next we need to build bike paths so people can get to the train.  Next let’s make sure we subsidize people riding the train.  Lastly, if we must, let’s figure out if the train and bike paths actually meet some realistic, useful, functional use for the citizens of the county.  This reveals a lot about what is driving the desire to build the train.  It’s not about serving the people's needs – it is ideology plain and simple.

It seems the Representative Paul Ryan has been in the news a lot lately.  I had the opportunity to catch one of his interviews recently and in those few, stolen minutes heard a lot of things I liked - enough to download a copy of his roadmap.  Over the last couple evenings I took some time to read it in more detail and I am impressed.

What impresses me the most is that it truly is a roadmap.  In other words, he just doesn’t say we need to fix healthcare or lower our debt, he actually has a well thought out plan for how to get from where we are today to where he is proposing.  This is in stark contrast to the ‘feel good’ sound bites we get from so many of our current, elected leaders today.

Two great examples where he provides a solid, concrete path forward is with Medicare and Social Security reform.  Both entitlements are in trouble financially and clearly are on an unsustainable path.   What makes them particularly difficult to fix is that so many Americans are in position where they are counting on the benefits already promised to them in those programs.  What Rep. Ryan proposes is that we guarantee the benefits in both cases for those individuals who are already 55 years or older but for those under 55 changes are necessary – and he outlines what those changes would be.  He doesn’t blow up either system but gradually puts them back on track and in a way that future generations can adjust to what those changes will be before they also have to rely on them.  As someone well shy of 55, I never have believed those programs would be solvent by time I was old enough to qualify them and think many people in my generation have been planning for their retirement with that in mind anyway  The changes proposes by Rep. Ryan would only be a pleasant surprise to those of us who never planned on receiving anything.

The “Roadmap for America’s Future 2.0” is about a 100 page document and I’m not going to do it justice to try and summarize it here.  I would recommend though that you check out the website and at least read the opening summary.  Representative Ryan’s plan is well thought out, available for public review, and bold reminder that the President just isn’t being honest when he says the Republicans aren’t bringing alternatives to the table.

I was recently taken to task as to why tort reform is more important to healthcare reform debate than public transit options, or, as I was corrected, just getting people out of their cars.  I am not going to rehash the public transit portion of that discussion – an informed reader can make their own judgment as to the relevancy of that – but in the course of that discussion an interesting Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report on tort reform came to my attention.

As way of background, tort law deals with resolving damages from injury arising from negligence or other wrongful acts.  In the context of healthcare, this could be a physician who is accussed of injuring a patient under their care in some way that is considered negligent.   Tort reform refers to legislation that would seek to put limits and additional rules around the types of lawsuits that could be brought in those situations as well as the amount of compensation that could be won.

According to this specific CBO report, the CBO found that if the most common reforms were enacted, this would result in about $11 billion in savings.  Not the silver bullet to our problem but it would help.  However, what I found more fascinating was that it would also save an additional $41 billion from the federal budget over the next 10 years because it would reduce spending in Medicare and other government-run healthcare plans.   The reason?  The CBO says:

“One possible explanation for that disparity is that the bulk of Medicare’s spending is on a fee-for-service basis, whereas most private health care spending occurs through plans that manage care to some degree.  Such plans limit the use of services that have marginal or no benefit to the patients (some of which might otherwise be provided as “defensive” medicine); in that way, plans control costs and keep premiums lower than they otherwise would be.”

Essentially, government run health care plans spend money on healthcare as it's delivered whether it's needed or not - folks get paid for the more procedures performed period.  Private plans on the other hand need evaluate the cost versus the effectiveness and provide quality care within a budget.    The first approach could work if you have unlimited money and unlimited resources (which we have neither of) and the second approach works by rewarding effective healthcare.  Food for thought when we debate whether or not the solution to out-of-control healthcare costs is based fundamentally around private insurance or government.

For most folks, it’s common knowledge that Wisconsin is dealing with a struggling economy. Exact numbers for the number of jobs we’ve lost in this recession vary but the unemployment rate is hovering in the 8 to 9% range right now. Not good. Perhaps this would be a time to focus on real issues that affect the state economy?

Meanwhile, the United Nations is melting down over scandals of exaggerated global warming claims and that data has been massaged to fit a political agenda. Data from the last decade even suggests there may not even be global warming but that’s not even the biggest news. The big news is that we’ve learned the research attempting to tie global warming to man-made carbon emissions clearly isn’t worth a damn (scientifically speaking). Based on that, it might be a good time for our political leaders to revisit the basis for ‘green’ legislation, don’t you think?

Special interest groups like the Sierra Club are doubling down and pushing ‘The Clean Energy Jobs Act (AB 649/SB 450). This is important, they claim, because it implements key provisions from Governor Doyle’s Global Warming Task Force. Never mind that all the research that the task force based those recommendations on is coming unhinged. Facts shouldn’t get in the way of a government bureaucracy!  Especially when the chairman of the Global Warming Task Force stands to profit from selling energy back to the state at a premium based on those recommendations. 

However, not to be too insensitive in a recession, they also claim this bill will create at least 15,000 new jobs. Not just any jobs either, green jobs. If you’re keeping score at home, that’s something like 200,000 in the jobs lost column and 15,000 in the jobs created column. That’s a little like giving someone a new bike that’s missing wheels and a seat. It’s the thought that counts, right? The other, dirty, little secret they won’t tell you is how many additional jobs this legislation will kill. So we’re not even talking about 15,000 net jobs necessarily! What if we kill 40,000 in the process as one study suggests?  Oops! Again, just picture that bike without a seat and you know what they’re doing here…

Conservation is good. I am all for it and for protecting our environment in sensible, meaningful ways. I have been involved with groups most of my life that promote those ideals. I am not, however, an environmentalist that believes no cost is too great and that legislation based on bad science is good as long as it is well-intentioned. Two wrongs never make a right and this legislation is all about building on the wrong science at the wrong time. Call, write, or e-mail your representative and let them know you don’t support this bill.

Even with the great news out of Massachusetts this week, the debate of healthcare rages on.  In the context of that debate I ran across this interesting graph.  It’s one of those graphs that at first glance would seem to make the case that universal, government-run healthcare is good.  After all, there is the United States with that bad-looking, red line running off the graph.
It is an interesting graph, with healthcare costs per person on the left, average life expectancy on the left, and the width of the line showing the average number of doctor visits a year.  So, we in the United States spend the most money and have slightly below average life expectancy according to at least one measure.  Note that Japan has the longest life expectancy with an average of over 12 visits a year per person.
Of course Japan has universal coverage so what are we supposed to conlcude?  Universal coverage = longer life span.  Is that the reason for the increase in lifespan though, are there any other possibilities?  It would also seem a logical conclusion that perhaps more visits to the doctor contribute to a long life span to just use the data shown in this graph.   We don’t know if folks in Japan are averaging 13 per year, 25 per year, or more though.   While the graph doesn’t include these other factors - what about the impact on lifespan from lifestyle, heredity, environment, and crime rate?  It would seem reasonable to me that those all could also contribute to the results we’re seeing.

The big take-away for me from this graph is that the US is far outspending these other countries for comparable results – the right hand side of the graph doesn’t at all show that much variance.  For my money, this is where the debate should be focused.  How do we save money?  Reducing mandates on coverage, allowing coverage to be available across state lines, and tort reform to just name a few.  All of these are things being promoted like Wisconsin’s own Representative Paul Ryan – unfortunately not from our Representative Tammy Baldwin.

Remember when the RTA was passed?  Supporters, including several supervisors who voted for it, swore up and down we would have our referendum.  Just let them pass the RTA and ‘trust them’.  So the RTA passed and we should be poised to get an opportunity to vote on it, right?  Not so fast.  Of course we couldn’t have a referendum in April.  This far too important to vote on in April they say.  November is when we should do it, well, maybe.  

Predictably though, now that most of the appointments have been made their true colors are showing.  Steve Hiniker, one of the appointees to the Dane County RTA, has already come out and said “I wouldn’t go in tomorrow or in spring saying we need a referendum.”  Whoa, what happened to our guarantee?  Oh, that’s right; the board didn’t have the authority to promise that.  The RTA can do whatever they like without asking the voters squat.  Incidentally that particular quote was pulled between when I first read the article this afternoon and this evening.  Instead we now we have Supervisor Opitz saying a referendum is a bad idea.  Makes you wonder how much that promise to have a referendum is really worth.

And who exactly is Steve Hiniker?  He’s the executive director of 1000 Friends of Wisconsin.  This is an organization dedicated to “smart growth” policies and pushing trains on everyone.  Even a quick look at their website reveals their bias towards trains.  Of all the transportation projects listed on their website, over 70% are for rail, trolleys, or trams (and I’m being kind with that number, many of the other items include trains to some degree, just not outright).  Nope, no bias there.  No wonder Mr. Hiniker doesn’t believe the voters should get a say in this.  He already “knows” what’s best for us.  

Unlike those Supervisors who believe the RTA is a done deal and we won’t remember their promise to give us a referendum, Dane County Supervisor Eileen Bruskewitz is still fighting to allow the people of Dane County to have a voice.  If you believe we should have the opportunity to vote on such an important issue to our area then I urge you to contact your supervisor and let them know you support Eileen’s resolution.  Even better, turn out in April 2010 and let your County Supervisor who voted to create the RTA know how you feel. 

Would the Isthmus call Code Pink ‘anti-victory’? Does the Capital Times writing about Fair Wisconsin protesting a legal amendment to the Wisconsin constitution call them ‘anarchists’? If the Wisconsin State Journal covers the Sierra Club protesting nuclear energy are they ‘anti-electricity’? I don’t think so and those labels would be inflammatory and distorting. On the other hand, if a group protests out of control government policies? Then they’re obviously ‘anti-government’, ‘militias’, or ‘racist’ to just name a few choice labels that are used.

Earlier this week in the Wisconsin State Journal they ran a couple articles on those ‘anti-government militias’. Recall also that for this week’s paper the Isthmus was there first to label candidate for governor Scott Walker as anti-government because he spoke at a Tea Party rally. However in the State Journal one story was from the AP about the rise of militias in the US in general and then there was a companion article about Wisconsin specifically. I’m not going to comment on the AP story other than to say it fits the pattern that anyone with a dissenting opinion of the current administration is racist. That doesn’t even deserve a response. I am familiar though with one of the groups highlighted in Wisconsin.

This group is called ‘We the People’ and they have been very active in participating in the local Tea Party events, shedding light on the healthcare debate, and generally just encouraging people to get involved in a number of current, national issues. In the spirit of full disclosure, I am not a member of this group but I do know several people in this group. They are definitely not an armed militia or a militia of any kind. Every protest, every rally they have participated in has been completely peaceful and they are not quasi-military in any way. The attempt here to paint them as ‘anti-government’ and label them a ‘militia’ is misinformed at best. The sad part is that a vast majority of people who read this article won’t know any better.

The Isthmus has an interesting article on Scott Walker this week.  While it’s obvious the overall tone is intended to paint the candidate for governor in a negative light, it seems to me that it actually highlights a lot of the good work he has done in Milwaukee County and that he has a strong vision for the state.  I think most of the perceived negatives come from the author’s lack of understanding rather than being true negatives.

For example, the opening salvo is to paint Walker as ‘anti-government’.  As this is explained, this perception comes from the fact that Walker stated he wants to ‘put our faith in the people and employers who make this country great’.  This is the crux of the problem (as the author sees it) and I can only assume the author would rather a candidate who asks us to put all our faith in the government.  What makes that position odd though is that the author then goes on to cite the extremely poor position Doyle and the current, Democrat-led, government has put our state in.  Given that fact, anyone who believes the people and, yes, employers (the people who create jobs for the aforementioned people) of the state of the Wisconsin should come first looks pretty darn good to me!  Score one for Walker.

It’s not that Walker hates government; it’s just that he states his belief that the government should be serving a different role than it has been.  That’s not ‘anti-government’, that’s just plain smart.  Clearly where the current leadership has been leading isn’t working and Walker simply is providing a strong vision for an alternative approach.

Another example given is how Walker apparently has done such a poor job with Milwaukee County parks that they’re ranked among the best in the nation (that's not a typo, yes the parks are ranked among the best). And this happened while he was reducing spending!  Smaller budget with as good or better results?  Sounds like a good deal to me.  Even if this is a testament to the park director’s leadership, clearly she found a way to be the best in the nation without a bottomless budget.  That sounds like a leader raising the bar to me. 

And so it goes.  There seems to be sort of a reluctant appreciation for Walker but an intense desire to find something that will ‘stick’ to him.  While I won’t comment on everything, I couldn’t let this next comment pass without commenting myself.  Shifting to more general policy later in the article the author writes:

“The obvious problem with Walker's logic is that no amount of tax cuts will encourage employers to hire workers to make products when already-produced inventory is sitting on shelves in stores and warehouses. The problem is lack of spending power among ordinary Americans. And the solution, some economists say, requires government intervention to put people back to work, restore spending power and get the economy rolling again.”

What the author conveniently ‘forgets’ is that tax cuts help everyone, not just employers, and that makes a huge difference.  Tax cuts would increase the spending power of ordinary Wisconsinites.  Tax cuts leave more money with the people that earned the money in the first place.  Those same people would now have money to spend on that inventory sitting on the shelves.  Government spending is just someone sitting in Madison (or Washington) taking our money, adding a little government-processing overhead (when does the middle-man not a take a little something for the 'effort'?), and then sending it back to where they want to spend it – like their politically connected projects and not necessarily where it’s most needed. 

You have to look no further than the failure of the current ‘stimulus’ to see how well government intervention works.  Walker is on the right track to suggest a different solution is in order.