Concord and Lexington.

Hi everyone,

Have you noticed that people won't call shenanigans! anymore? Even when it's obvious?

We're so exasperated by the mind-numbing lack of thought in current politics that we just roll our eyes and try to think of something else to do. Do we sit down and figure out the sneaky propaganda hidden in a phrase like "Taxpayer's Bill of Rights" or do we think about putting away the dishes in the dishwasher?

The dishwasher usually wins.

Well, Glenn Grothman, my Wisconsin State Senator -- and the most notorious Right Winger in the entire box of nuts -- provides plenty of fodder: enough to keep the dishes in the dishwasher for a while yet.

You don't need a PhD in philosophy and logic to find the holes in his worldview, his political positions, his knock-off neo-con rhetoric, or his efforts at public moral pronouncement -- but I've got one, just so you know.

I guess what has finally made me mad enough not to take it anymore, are his relentless attempts to eliminate as many public and civic programs as possible, if not by hacking up the budget then through the "Taxpayer's Bill of Rights" or whatever other Orwellian/Rovian double-think they can come up with. To me, paying taxes is just our ante at the card table of the American republic, but for some people paying taxes is an illegitimate government intrusion on their desire for another jet, or a skil lodge in Aspen, say.

Which of us is right, I'm happy to argue about -- but even that doesn't bother me nearly as much as this: Glennn consistently finds ways to cut the budget of the University of Wisconsin when he represents a district with a university campus that has shown some of the highest growth in the System and which provides, demonstrably, the best bang for the educational buck in the state -- all of it, right here at home.

Why he consistently sacrifices the interests of his own constituents to serve the interests of all those anti-civic anti-public program-slashers is beyond me. Maybe he likes hanging out with them. Maybe it's the tax-cutting testosterone -- or that tax-cutting KoolAid they've all been drinking.

So here we are. I'll pick out something each week and just get this out of my system. Glenn, if you or your staff end up reading any of this (he has a great staff, btw) I promise to put your comments up unedited.

hiho
Mpeterson