Glenn Grothman: no real budget priorities -- again.

Hi folks,

This from our own Zak Masur reporting from West Bend.

Republicans ready to budge a bit on budget:

Surprisingly, Sen. Glenn Grothman (R-West Bend) agrees, but with a caveat. 'It can be wrapped up immediately if the Republicans agreed to one and a half billion dollars of new taxes - but why would they do that?'

What if he and his pals simply agreed to budget enough to pay for the things we need "to live well in Wisconsin?"

We don't hear much from Glenn about what it means to "live well in Wisconsin" -- only the endless list of things he thinks we don't need to live well in Wisconsin.

If he told us what he believes we need to live well in Wisconsin, we'd be able to figure out how much it'd cost and budget accordingly.

Sounds good but, unfortunately, if he did that, he wouldn't have anything to talk about. 90% of his press time is spent criticizing everybody else. He'd vanish from the news, and from government, and then we could elect Pat Strachota to his Senate seat.

Hmmm.

I'm just thinking out loud.


hiho
Mpeterson

Glenn Grothman: wrong on citizenship checks.

Hi folks,

Um, illegal immigrants are already... well, illegal. Some cities have decided not to ask those applying for public services whether they are illegal aliens or not. But wait, here's Glenn:

From The Badger Herald:
by Christie Taylor
Wednesday, September 19, 2007

"State Republicans introduced legislation Tuesday restricting local governments from offering sanctuary to illegal immigrants throughout Wisconsin.

Under the new bill, co-sponsored by Sen. Glenn Grothman, R-West Bend, and Rep. Roger Roth, R-Grand Chute, cities and counties would be unable to pass laws prohibiting government employees from demanding proof of immigration status or notifying the federal government of the presence of illegal aliens.

Currently, Dane County has an ordinance blocking government workers from asking for proof of citizenship."

Now, think this through with me: if government workers ask illegal immigrants if they are illegal, what will the illegal immigrants say?

Too easy?

Okay, let's spin this the other way: if you were an illegal immigrant who wanted to expose yourself to local government, would you figure out a way to get fake identity papers?

I know, still too easy.

And finally, in the sauce-for-the-goose-is-sauce-for-the-gander category, imagine the following scenario:

Glenn Grothman goes in to have his drivers license renewed. The DVM clerk asks him to provide proof that he's an American.

Does Glenn:

a) good naturedly reach into his pocket and produce passport, birth certificate, and social security card.

b) suddenly realize we have no national identity card and vow to introduce legislation to establish a national identity program, maybe including 'chipping' for kids under 4.

c) become indignant and loudly blame government for excessive bureaucracy and a frivolous waste of the taxpayers money.


Did everyone else get C ?

Me too.


Glenn, like a lot of politicians, seems to be avoiding the elephant in the deportation lounge.

Think carefully: do you want to pay the real price for lettuce or apples that have been picked by American workers making American wages? I suspect not. If you want to pay what you're paying now, then, by implication, you want illegal immigrants working illegally in America.


Either way, Glenn's bill is nothing but grandstanding.


Glenn, cut it out. Get back to figuring out how to fix the health care system.

hiho
Mpeterson

Glenn Grothman: Helps unemployed, initiates Apocalyse.

Hi folks,

Well, this is where you start scratching your head and looking for locusts.


From The Badger Herald - Committee passes bill to benefit unemployed:

"The Wisconsin State Senate Committee on Labor, Elections and Urban Affairs passed a bipartisan bill Tuesday granting tax exemptions on unemployment benefits from the state. The bill was co-authored by Sen. Dave Hansen, D-Green Bay, and Rep. Jim Soletski, D-Green Bay. Republican Sen. Glenn Grothman, R-West Bend, and Sen. Alan Lasee, R-De Pere, also approved the bill that would aid the roughly 4.5 percent of Wisconsin residents who are currently unemployed." [my italics]

I'd love to believe that eliminating taxation on unemployment benefits represents some kind of sudden good sense, but it is such a departure from the rest of Glenn's career that this happy interpretation is unimaginable -- especially when weighed against the degree to which this seemingly compassionate action fits his darker, Guiding Meme: Taxes are evil because they take money away from good people and give it to bad people who don't deserve it.

As sinful and undeserving as the unemployed are in the neo-con universe, I suspect Glenn believes taxation is still worse than they are.


I'm guessing, of course.


hiho
Mpeterson

Glenn Grothman: wrong on denying workers rights to professionals

Hi folks,

Glenn thinks it's a bad idea to let UW faculty unionize.

Proposal allowing UW faculty to unionize draws fierce criticism - The Daily Cardinal

Republicans in the state Legislature have recently called on Democrats to remove a budget proposal that would give UW System faculty members the right to vote on collective bargaining.

State Sen. Glenn Grothman, R-West Bend, asked Democrats in the state Senate to eliminate the provision from its proposed budget.

Grothman said if UW professors unionize, it could make them “bitter, more expensive and monolithic.” He also said that professors’ unions could hold too much political sway.

“I think unions are more likely to give money to political candidates … they’d rather turn the university into a hotbed of partisan political activity,” Grothman said.

[...]

Josh Wescott, spokesman for state Senate Majority Leader Judy Robson, D-Beloit, said he did not express concern about any of the demands that the proposed union could make.

“This is about making sure we have the best and brightest minds here [in Wisconsin],” Westcott said, referring to the ability of the state to recruit and retain faculty.

Wescott also added that the proposals by Grothman are akin to slamming the doors on higher education and wrapping them in “barbed wire and electric fencing.”

The university administration is not taking a stance on the issue.

UW System spokesperson David Giroux said that the collective bargaining provision is an issue for faculty and staff to decide on, not administrators.

“They are all capable of being independent thinkers,” Giroux said. “They are capable of making the decision on their own.”

One thing Glenn got wrong here was about giving money to political candidates. Since he has conscientiously cut faculty benefits over the years while avoiding anything like a cost of living adjustment, none of us really has any money to give to political candidates in the first place.

The Greater Irony here is that Glenn's own votes are causing this drive toward unionization. Faculty don't care too much for the idea of a union. We like to think of ourselves as professionals and above the fray of money -- but when it happens, it'll happen for the same reason any other group unionizes: the failure of government to represent its interests.

It is easy to see that now-Senator Grothman has failed to represent the needs of UW faculty -- that's not a surprise. What is worse, but more telling, is that by continually gutting the university budgets he has shortsightedly failed to represent the long term interests of the people of Wisconsin who the university serves.


hiho
Mpeterson

Glenn Grothman: lights up while Madison burns.

Hi folks,

There's a lot going on in Madison lately... budget budget budget.

Instead of attending to the serious business of why America should be the only industrialized country in the world without responsible health care, Glenn lights up a doobie with the money we're spending to keep kids from smoking. This piece of opinion showed up in our local advertising rag a week or so ago as well.

This time, in the Tomah Journal's - Opinion section. One comment grabbed my attention:

Cigarette smoking in this country has been declining for the last 40 years. Oddly, smoking among high school kids went up until dropping the last few years. There’s no mystery as to the reasons for the decline -- studies in the 1960s confirmed smoking was bad for your health, the military stopped handing out free cigarettes, and cigarette taxes went up.

In reality, almost no one starts smoking after about age 18. Almost no one. And no 12 year old who starts smoking pays a damn bit of attention to the warning labels, scientific studies, or receives free cigarettes from the military. Well, not yet anyway.

Couldn't the legislature start thinking about net, instead of gross? If we spend the money when they're young, we save a ton of money (in our taxes and insurance premiums) fixing their heart disease, emphysema, and lung cancer later. We might also remember that in a billion dollar budget, 10 million is 1% of the budget.

Personally, I'm sick and tired of seeing the words "conservative" or "Republican" being used to camouflage a philosophy of "penny wise and pound foolish."


hiho
Mpeterson

Glenn Grothman: wrong for not investing in the future of Wisconsin.

Hi folks,

In the "there he goes again" category:

On Thursday AUGUST 16, 2007 the Chipppewa Herald reported that Glenn once again found himself in the minority on the position of university tuition.


From the Chippewa Herald online

Wisconsin lawmakers approve tuition reciprocity deal

By SCOTT BAUER

MADISON, Wis. - A tuition reciprocity deal between Minnesota and Wisconsin won approval Thursday from Wisconsin's budget-writing committee, sealing the deal that had been worked out between the two states.
...

The Legislature's Joint Finance Committee approved the deal 15-1, with Republican Sen. Glenn Grothman of West Bend voting against it. He expressed concern that the deal encourages Wisconsin students to choose Minnesota schools over ones in their home state because there's no higher cost to go there.

I'm surprised Glenn worries about students leaving Wisconsin. Every time he's voted on a budget, he's increased the cost of education for Wisconsin residents.

Glenn had it a lot easier when he was at Madison.

As recently as 15 years ago, the state invested nearly 75% of the tuition costs for each student attending the UW -- but during the last 15 years, the state legislature blindly cut the state's share to about 25%.

The people of Wisconsin covered 75% of Glenn's tuition back in the 70's. He paid about 25%.

For students today, it's the other way around -- they now pay 75% of the cost and precisely because legislators like Glenn believe education is not a good investment of our tax dollars.

You don't improve economy by making it harder for people to go to college.


hiho
Mpeterson

Glenn Grothman: Taxcutter as Deadbeat Dad.

Hi folks,

In an opinion piece for the Journal-Sentinel last week, Glenn complains that funding 4 year old kindergartens is a bad way to improve educational performance.

From the Journal-Sentinel: "Be leery of government 'helping' your children"
Glenn begins this way,

The most important function of a society is raising its children. And with American high school students doing poorly on international tests, it's tempting to accept any new suggestion to improve our educational system.

I'm startled, frankly, that Glenn believes society should have any hand at all in raising children, but, now that he's said it in print, I'm more hopeful.

American high school kids are performing horribly on international tests. Glenn finally looked at the reports showing -- ready? -- that by the 12th grade, US students only outscore "Cyprus, Lithuania and South Africa in math."

This scares the hell out of me, but Glenn doesn't seem too worried about it. He's repeatedly slashed away at the kind of responsible funding for education that would have invested in our economic future by keeping our kids competitive with the rest of the industrially developed world.

Even more glaring is this comment at the end about working mothers:

It is easy to forget that, while most mothers with preschool children now work, only a minority of them work full time and leave their children with strangers. For the rest of our lifetimes, the left will continually say that the more the government cares for the children, the better off the children will be. I doubt that the founders of this country would have believed that.

Funny he should mention The Founders of this county. My particular favorite had a comment about this:

“I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion.” Thomas Jefferson, 9/28/1820

We do that by making sure each child gets a great education. We have to educate each child as if they might become President -- or a State Senator. Because, they might.

Otherwise we'll get the leaders we deserve.

Period.

While it's obvious that throwing money at a problem doesn't solve it, cutting off most of its funding doesn't fix it either. Glenn's entire life, etched boldly on his vanity license plates, is about cutting off funding to 'wasteful' programs like -- apparently -- education.

That's why this "opinion" piece was soaked through with enough hypocrisy to give me a migraine.

Look:

• You can't slash the number of employees in your business to save money and then complain that service isn't as good as it should be.
• You can't cut the number of doctors in a hospital to save money and then complain that the care isn't as good as it should be.
• And you cannot cut school system funding and then complain that they are doing a bad job.

But here's what else I know:

1) Slashing funding to the high schools, whether in MPS or elsewhere, punishes children who don't deserve to be punished. You don't make students smarter by stuffing more students into a classroom. Trying to punish the teachers who refuse to vote for him, only hurts the children.

And

2) Slashing funding to students you are obligated to help, is equivalent to abandoning your family.

Thinking like this makes Glenn the deadbeat dad of tax cutter, refusing to keep up child support.


hiho
Mpeterson

Glenn Grothman: wrong on clubbing his alma mater to death?

"The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers" says Rep. Frank Lasee, R-Green Bay ...

-- whoops, I mean William Shakespeare in Henry VI Act IV, Scene II.


Or, since they won't let him do that, how about this?

The Janesville Gazette reports

Tired of lawyers, lawmaker wants to cut law school's funding

MADISON, Wis. - A lawmaker who persuaded the Assembly to eliminate all state funding for the University of Wisconsin law school says his reasoning is simple: There's too many lawyers in Wisconsin.

That and soon to be ex-Rep. Lassee might have thought to consider that the UW law school is the only state university law school in Wisconsin. Well, here:

More than 14,000 Wisconsin residents are practicing lawyers, according to the American Bar Association, which puts the state in the middle of the pack nationally for its overall number of attorneys.

Davis said the law school has educated many political and business leaders and was proud of its record.

Its alumni include former Gov. Tommy Thompson, six out of seven state Supreme Court justices and several of Lasee's colleagues. Two of them - Rep. Mark Gundrum, R-New Berlin, and Rep. Sheryl Albers, R-Reedsburg - voted for the budget that slashed their alma mater's funding.

And, I put this up in here because Sen. Grothman is also a product of tax-payer subsidized education at the UW Law school.

Does Glenn believe that future students should have to pay a massively larger share of their education than he did? That it was okay for us to subsidize his education, but not future students?

Just checking. I guess we'll find out.

hiho
Mp

Glenn sighting: now at Wikipedia.

Hi folks,

Discovered Glenn's entry at Wikipedia.


Sic transit gloria.


hiho
Mpeterson

Glenn Grothman: wrong on the ethics of birth control.

Hi folks,

Back after a break and catching up.

Back on May 16th the Wisconsin Radio Network reported that Glenn had voted against some emergency contraception legislation. I'm still astonished by Glenn's vote.

They reported:

No one spoke against the bill, which passed 27-to-6. Juneau Republican Scott Fitzgerald was among the "no" votes. "Ultimately, it's still a question of conception and life," said Fitzgerald. Also voting against the bill were Republican Senators Glenn Grothman, Dan Kapanke, Neal Kedzie, Mary Lazich and Joe Liebham.

Middleton Democrat John Erpenbach chaired a committee which heard testimony on the bill. He noted only one group opposed the it. Pro Life Wisconsin, said Erpenbach, is "against . . . all forms of contraception." Fitzgerald cited the group's stance in explaining his vote. "Pro Life Wisconsin had a little bit different take on it than Right to Life and the Catholic Conference and certainly Planned Parenthood," said Fitzgerald. The bill requires hospitals inform rape victims of emergency contraceptives and make the morning after pill available to them. Prospects are unclear in the Republican controlled state Assembly.

I assume that Glenn agrees with the position of Pro Life Wisconsin, one of his biggest supporters. If I'm wrong about that, let me know!

Here's the problem: Pro Life Wisconsin believes that any kind of birth control -- anything that prevents conception -- is a kind of before-the-fact abortion and cannot be ethically sustained. The principle here is that anything which prevents a human being, even a potential one, from becoming an actual human being, is immoral. This includes abortion, clearly, but also emergency contraception and even condoms. Ironically, if you accept the idea that preventing conception is always wrong, the same logic would hold that even abstinence is immoral since it too prevents the conception and creation of an actual human being.

Maybe this is why people like Leah Vukmir and Glenn keep voting to guarantee the rights of rapists to force their victims to conceive.

When you start getting screwy answers like this, it's time to go back and recheck your original principles for cracks. They're usually the problem.

Your mileage may vary.


hiho
Mpeterson

Glenn Grothman: still wrong for helping rapists.

Hi folks,

Ah, the end of another semester ate the last few weeks, and Glenn has been relatively quiet, but here is the latest: a NO vote for providing rape victims with emergency contraception. [I actually feel a little bad about taking him to task this way since we had a nice phone conversation last week -- but I'd feel worse about letting him get away with it. ;^)]


Here are some of the details:

Posted at the Cheese-O-Sphere:

But originally from
By SCOTT BAUER
Associated Press Writer

MADISON, Wis. (AP) - Hospitals would be required to provide the so-called morning after pill to rape victims under a measure that passed the state Senate on Wednesday and has the backing of Gov. Jim Doyle.

[snip]

Those voting against the proposal Wednesday in the Senate were Republicans Scott Fitzgerald of Juneau, Glenn Grothman of West Bend, Dan Kapanke of La Crosse, Neal Kedzie of Elkhorn, Mary Lazich of New Berlin and Joe Leibham of Sheboygan.

Preventing pregnancy in the case of rape seems obvious to me. Voting against this idea, and I've said this before, seems to be helping the rapist finish the job. Those who believe that emergency contraception is a kind of abortion simply haven't considered the question of human life carefully enough to speak intelligently about it.

hiho
Mpeterson

Glenn Grothman: can't win.

Hi folks,

I nearly fell over when I read March 24th's West Bend Express News. The "From the Hill" column -- where our local politicos say what's on their minds -- included an article from Glenn Grothman with the headline: Reviewing the tech schools.

Apparently the recent Legislative Audit Bureau report showed that:

[During] the past nine years, their (sic) property tax levy for technical schools has gone up an average of 6.6 percent per year -- well above the rest of your property tax bill.

And, therefore, Glenn concludes:

It's no wonder your tech school property tax bill is going through the roof.

The Technical colleges provide Wisconsin citizens with the kind of instruction that improves their lives, and provides Wisconsin manufacturers with the skilled labor force that helped us hold on to jobs here decades after the rust belt swallowed Detroit and Gary and Ohio.

We may need to "review" funding levels as the state undergoes a conversion to a knowledge-based economy. We'll have to figure that one out.... but ...

But what I'm really wondering is how someone with the word "tax cutter" abbreviated on his license plate missed roughly $783,000,000 (783 million dollars) a year in state income tax, sales tax, and property taxes?? Did $783 million just fly under his taxcutting radar?

During all the years of his Taxpayer's Bill of Rights shenanigans, how did he manage to miss it??


Inquiring minds want to know.

hiho
Mpeterson

Glenn Grothman: wrong on educational budgeting.

Okay, so I'm really harping on this wage thing.... but we've all been really really good sports about this for some years while Sen Grothman -- allegedly our representative -- has had a field day ragging on us.


From Milwaukee Magazine:

The study found the average base salaries of technical college teachers in Wisconsin are “among the highest reported nationally.” It also found average annual earnings of the technical college teachers exceeded those of full-time faculty at two-year University of Wisconsin Colleges by a jaw-dropping $22,000.

[...]

But Milwaukee has turned things completely upside down: Average faculty earn more ($89,850) than administrators ($86,556) at MATC.

I've been working here for the UW Colleges for 15 years, I have a PhD from one of the better universities on the planet, I love my job, get good student evaluations and, most importantly, provide a great deal in higher ed for the taxpayers, my real bosses.... and these tech school faculty earn on average $39,000 more a year than I do?

Doesn't that seem like a lot?

I note it in passing.

Okay, I think I'm done now.

hiho
Mp

Glenn Grothman: wrong on education, again.

Hi folks,


A recent story in The Capital Times describing the lousy state of UW System faculty salaries -- something I'd suspected but hadn't been able to substantiate -- and the attendant legislative shenanigans.

Here are the juicy bits. For the entire article, follow the link:

David Olien: UW salary woes come as no surprise
By David Olien, March 19, 2007

Wednesday's edition of The Capital Times reported the results of a legislative audit revealing that generally faculty at the state's technical colleges are paid more than those on University of Wisconsin campuses.

[...]

...Wisconsin's legislators rank among the best paid in the nation when you examine their salaries, their generous per diem payments, their sick leave conversion privileges and their participation in the Wisconsin Retirement System.

[...]

Legislators indicating surprise at the audit finding are being disingenuous. The fact is UW System personnel and campus chancellors have been telling legislative leaders, members of Joint Finance and the rank and file for well over a decade that UW System faculty have fallen far behind their national peers. It should be no shock that faculty have been leaving UW two-year campuses for the technical colleges for over a decade. Legislators were also informed of that fact when the situation first developed.

[...]

For faculty at the two-year UW college campuses, the results were even worse, with a gap of over $12,500 annually behind national peers at the full professor rank, $9,000 at the associate rank and $10,000 at the assistant professor rank.

Not to mention that my salary trails the average UW system associate prof salary by about 8,000 -- and the tech school average by 11,000. I like my job, but that still seems like a lot to me sometimes.

Glenn gets a lot of the blame. For years he's railed against the UW System to make himself look like a neo-conservative purist and caused our little campus no end of grief -- even while hypocritically claiming to represent the residents of Washington County who benefit from our presence -- and while collecting, it now turns out, a pretty good salary.

He's used the excuse of university excesses, when there weren't any, to slash away at taxes for ideological rather than practical reasons.

The Devil is always in the details. Maybe Glenn can challenge him to a fiddling contest and have Charlie Daniels record it.


hiho
Mpeterson

Glenn Grothman: wrong on Tommy Thompson??

Hi folks,

Another installment of "When ideological purity trumps common sense."

Here's what Glenn said this week -- about Tommy Thompson this time.

[The former Governor was missing from last week's Conservative Political Action Conference beauty contest for the Republican presidential candidates.]

Craig Gilbert in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel online writes:

"I think it's a great year for a dark horse," said Wisconsin state Sen. Glenn Grothman, referring to the "question marks" conservatives have about the frontrunners.

Asked whether Thompson could be his conservative "dark horse," the West Bend lawmaker said, "I'm looking for a conservative. . . . Tommy's not a conservative."

Tommy's not a conservative?


I'd love to try, but there's no way I can top this.

hiho
Mpeterson

Glenn "Jethro" Grothman: wrong on Hispanic history.

Hi folks,

Real life and work caught up with me during most of January and February but Glenn, as always, is still busy embarrassing Washington County.

There is a back(b)log [a blogjam? :^)] of nonsense , but here's the latest -- you've probably already seen it.

In an interview with WKOW TV Glenn managed to get a headline that reads: Grothman: ''Why in the world would we give preferences to Hispanics?

"I think our society is used to giving preference to African Americans," Grothman told 27 News. "But why in the world would we give preferences to Hispanics, who've just come here? Perhaps we could remove preferences for those people."

The Capital Times replied with West Bend should be ashamed of Sen. Grothman's views. Here's part of that reply:

One can read into these idiotic words in many ways. Clearly, however, the words are xenophobic and to some degree reflect the views and opinions of some, if not most, of the people in West Bend he is, after all, their representative. [...]

The senator from West Bend joined in the debate sounding like Jethro from "The Beverly Hillbillies." To amplify his backwoods knowledge, West Bend's gifted son stated that "historical, racial prejudices have declined, obviating the need" for any policy aimed at helping disadvantaged minorities in the state. Wow! According to state Sen. Grothman, Wisconsin has achieved a colorblind society.

Is there no shame in West Bend? [Robert Miranda]

We should remember that lies never hurt nearly so much as the truth. Does this sting because it's a lie, or because it's the truth? I worry that Mr. Miranda nailed it. [For more, thoughtful response, see Caffeinated Politics.]

Apparently, Glenn never figured out why we (all of us, not just some disembodied evil guv'rmnt) why we might want to make getting into college more than a matter of whether you went to a properly funded high school.

That's ashame. There are perfectly good reasons.

On the other hand, this is just another example of the same mentality that thought it was a good idea to put millions of federal dollars at stake by de-listing that damned garter snake -- just so one of his friends could put up a fence.

Still, he flip-flopped on that vote. Maybe he'll flip-flop on Hispanic history too.

But wait, does this mean that he's flip-flopped on African-American history? It looks like he's no longer opposed to MLK day -- at least, not in public.


hiho
Mpeterson

Glenn Grothman: an imprudent approach to garters.

Hi folks,

Oh and about the Butler's Garter snake: JCRAR voted 7-2 to rescind the order removing the snake from the threatened species list. What was interesting to me about this is Glenn's voting with the majority against his earlier point of view.

He told the Journal:

Sen. Glenn Grothman (R-West Bend), a critic of the DNR's handling of the issue, said he was satisfied that the agency was making progress to accommodate private landowners.

This was all true earlier in the summer. Were the people he'd previously, and bizarrely, dismissed as "so-called" scientists suddenly right? and -- anyway, oh heck. See the previously posted catalogue of Glenn posturing.

Anyway, breathe easier for the little guys. What's good for Butler's Gartersnake is good for Wisconsin -- including our children and grand children.

This sort of thing is yet another example of a lack of either prudence or temperance in Glenn's manipulation of the legislative process.


hiho
Mpeterson

Glenn Grothman: missing email address.

Hi folks,


I'm tickled to tell you that Glenn took the trouble and time away from finding new ways to cut government services to the people of Washington County in order to send me a big package of documents including:

• a page of his office stationery
• his business card
• a page from the West Bend Daily News Opinion page (including the usual full spread of political opinions available in our local press, from neo-con Bill "Shut up!" O'Reilly, all the way over to the even more neo-con Owen "B&S" Robinson) and, of course,
• one of the freebie DOT maps he hands out with a Glenn Grothman State Senator sticker stuck on it...

...all with Sen.Grothman@legis.state.wi.us neatly underlined or highlighted -- exactly the address I posted in the comments to the previous message.

Which is darned nice... and darned nice of Glenn to point out that he is accessible in email.

-- but I should note that his email address is still not up in the legislative email address page.

So Glenn, what up with dat?

Oh never mind. It's just a little wrinkle anyway.


I'll be back with the promised bit about Glenn not being a real, traditional American conservative in the next post, later this week.

Keep the faith. Back in a bit.

hiho
Mpeterson

Glenn Grothman: cutting off his constituents.

Hi folks,

Sorry I've been busy. I've been reading John Dean's new book Conservatives without Conscience, and it's confirmed a lot of things I had already started to believe. For instance, the reason why I've never been able to understand the reckless non-conservative character of today's neo-cons is that I've been trying to understand them politically instead of psychiatrically. Now, finally, even Senator Grothman makes sense to me.

Anyway, there's more Butler's Garter snake stuff inbound, since the committe is going to have to bust a hump to cause whatever damage they can before they lose the majority in January -- but here's something I noticed, just in passing.

Glenn is one of a handful of Senators who do not have an email address.

He must be too busy.


Here's the listing from the Email directory for the Wisconsin State Legislature.

District Number 13

Senator Scott Fitzgerald Sen.fitzgerald@legis.wisconsin.gov
(608) 266-5660 Capitol 317 East

Staff:
Judi Rhodes-Engels judi.rhodes-engels@legis.wisconsin.gov
Tad Ottman Tad.Ottman@legis.wisconsin.gov
Mike Prentiss Mike.Prentiss@legis.wisconsin.gov
Cindy Block Cindy.Block@legis.wisconsin.gov

---

District Number 20

Senator Glenn Grothman
(608) 266-7513 Capitol 20 South

Staff:
Amy Gehrke Amy.Gehrke@legis.wisconsin.gov
Jolene Churchill Jolene.Churchill@legis.wisconsin.gov
James Emerson James.Emerson@legis.wisconsin.gov
Regina Kolbow Regina.Kolbow@legis.wisconsin.gov

---

District Number 30

Senator Dave Hansen Sen.hansen@legis.wisconsin.gov
(608) 266-5670 Capitol 319 South

Staff:
Eric Genrich eric.genrich@legis.wisconsin.gov
Jay Wadd Jay.Wadd@legis.wisconsin.gov
John Wagnitz John.Wagnitz@legis.wisconsin.gov
Jessica Lundquist jessica.lundquist@legis.wisconsin.gov

---

You'll notice who's missing.

I note it in passing.



hiho
Mpeterson

Glenn Grothman: finally recongnized as caucus leader in a minority view.

Whew. Sorry to have been away. We scheduled Midterm exams during election week this year so I've been grading when I wasn't phone banking.

But here we have a little insight into the great waltz of America -- what goes up, comes down.

Senator Grothman is once again closer to the truth revealed in polls, by the voters, and in constitutional law: he is once again explicitly the representative of a minority political view.

Whether this will give his symptoms the chance to ease off from the crystal meth narcosis of all that services-cutting kool-aid, we'll have to see. Presumably the Butler's Garter Snake has a few years left now, before extinction and, therefore, so do we humans. Presumably Glenn's minority and authoritarian commitments to being pro-birth, but not pro-life, will also have to shuffle away from the firelight and back into the darkness for a while. I'm hopeful that he'll come around to the kind of conservatism that represents the best in American history -- like Barry Goldwater or John Dean, say, rather than Joe McCarthy or George W(rongway) Bush.

But more on that later in the week. Next up, Glenn Grothman: wrong on conservatism.

hiho
Mpeterson