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Walker’s welfare reform works

by Owen | 0614, 27 Sep 1616 | Politics - Wisconsin | 0 Comments

My column for the West Bend Daily News is online. Here you go:

Albert Einstein famously defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. If that is the case, then the people who are constantly surprised when welfare reform that incents work and requires responsibility actually works must be lapsing into bouts of insanity.

Twenty years ago, Gov. Tommy Thompson signed one of his signature achievements into law. Wisconsin Works (W-2) fundamentally reformed welfare and became a model for other states and the federal government.

W-2 was based on a very simple premise. If you are able to work, you must work in order to receive assistance from the taxpayers. Thompson understood that taxpayers are fundamentally decent. They are willing to lend a hand up to people and families who are down on their luck or unable to work, but every person should be expected to work as much as they are able before handing them a dollar that was taken from another working person.

W-2 was a revolutionary success. Former welfare recipients went back to work and the number of people on welfare plummeted. That is not to say that it was less expensive for taxpayers. Actually, spending on various assistance programs increased dramatically under Thompson as Wisconsin rewarded working people who still did not earn enough to get by with generous subsidies as they continued to improve their lot.

But beyond the tangible benefit to the state of former welfare recipients working and contributing to the betterment of their communities as they bettered themselves, the intangible benefits were enormous. There is a fundamental human dignity that comes through work. People take more pride in themselves and in the material things they purchase with money earned from their labor. There are innumerable stories of families who look back on the implementation of W-2 as a transformative event in their lives that opened doors to a brighter future.

Thompson’s W-2 was so impactful, the Republicans in Congress and President Bill Clinton used it as the model for the federal welfare reform they passed into law later the same year. The results mirrored those in Wisconsin. The latter half of the 1990s saw welfare, poverty and unemployment rates drop all over the nation.

The natural course of democratic government, however, is to drift toward liberalism. As the 21st century progressed, both the state of Wisconsin and the federal government gradually eased the work requirements for welfare while continuing to increase spending. The welfare rolls gradually climbed higher as it became easier for people to receive taxpayer-funded benefits with fewer restrictions or requirements. Unemployment and poverty pushed stubbornly higher in the poorest neighborhoods.

Then along came Gov. Scott Walker with the same tried and true idea. Last year, the Republican-led state Legislature and Walker reformed Wisconsin’s FoodShare program to require people who are able to work, to work. Just like Thompson, Walker’s reform coupled the work requirements with generous free training and other resources to help people get back to work.

Walker’s reform of FoodShare has been a sensational success. Anybody who remembered W-2 and its policy children could have predicted as much. In only 15 months, the Wisconsin Department of Health Services reports 38 percent of people who were eligible for FoodShare benefits have found employment averaging more than 32 hours per week at an average of $11.99 per hour.

Meanwhile, another roughly 50,000 people stopped receiving FoodShare benefits because they failed to meet the work requirements despite being able to work. Those are people who obviously did not need the benefits enough to get off their rear ends and demonstrate even a modicum of effort.

The results of Walker’s most recent welfare reform was entirely predictable. Conservative welfare reform works. Every time. To think that it would not is, by definition, insanity.

Walker makes first offer on transportation budget

by Owen | 0627, 20 Sep 1616 | Politics - Wisconsin | 0 Comments

My column for the West Bend Daily News is online. Here you go:

Gov. Scott Walker released his transportation budget proposal last week and made his position perfectly clear when stating he is “not going to raise the gas tax or other associated fees without a corresponding reduction.” That is a welcome statement to this taxpayer.

The issue Wisconsin is facing in the next budget is the forecasted revenue for the transportation fund falls about a billion dollars short of paying for forecasted expenditures. Whether this happens to a family, business or government, there are only three things one can do when this happens: reprioritize and reduce the forecasted spending, borrow money, or find a way to increase revenue. Walker has taken the last option off the table and attacked the issue with a combination of the first two options.

Walker’s justification for refusing to increase revenue by increasing taxes or fees is simply that despite several years of tax cuts, Wisconsinites are still taxed too much. Walker would rather the government do the heavy lifting of prioritizing and cutting back instead of forcing families to do it to pay higher taxes. The governor is right.

Wisconsin’s gas tax is still among the highest in the nation. According to a fact sheet the governor released, at 32.9 cents per gallon, Wisconsin’s total taxes and fees collected at the pump ranks as the 11th highest in the nation. But that is only part of the story. The same Wisconsinites who pay the gas tax also pay all of the rest of Wisconsin’s tax burden, and it is a heavy burden. Wisconsin still ranks as the fifth highest taxed state according to CNN/Money. As State Sen. Duey Stroebel rightly said in a recent column, “With Wisconsin’s overall tax burden still in the top 10, this is no time to be campaigning for higher taxes.”

Meanwhile, it should be noted Wisconsin spends a ton of money on transportation — more than most states. Wisconsin spends about $3.8 billion per year on highways, which ranks 14th nationally. Total transportation spending, including state and local spending, is 33 percent higher than the national average according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

In other words, despite cries of “poor” from some folks, there is plenty of money for transportation. Yes, the recipients of that spending always want more, but it is the job of the administration to prioritize the spending within the confines of Wisconsinites’ ability and willingness to pay.

That is exactly what Walker’s budget proposal does. Walker’s transportation budget proposal actually increases state funding for maintenance of existing roads and sends more money to local units of government for their transportation needs. He partially pays for those increases by halting, delaying, and slowing down some existing projects including the widening of Verona Road in Madison, expanding Interstate 94 in Racine and Kenosha, and part of the Zoo Interchange.

Walker’s budget proposal also seeks to borrow $500 million, which, according to the governor, is the lowest level of borrowing since the 2001-03 budget. That is still a lot of borrowing, but using debt to fund major projects used for 30 years by future taxpayers, too. The key is to manage debt sensibly.

Walker is taking the correct approach to managing the state’s transportation needs through prioritization and forcing efficiencies instead of turning to the taxpayers for more money. He is also right to shift more spending to maintaining the roads the state has and away from more expansions. Is it perfect? No. It still spends and borrows too much, but it is a very good start.

Referenda belie need to increase state spending

by Owen | 0633, 13 Sep 1616 | Education, Politics - Wisconsin | 0 Comments

My column for the West Bend Daily News is online. Here you go:

Despite the fact the state of Wisconsin spent more than $450 million more on K-12 education last fiscal year than it did four years ago, the persistent lie about Republicans “gutting education” is apparently taking its toll as legislative Republicans signal a willingness to spend even more in the next budget. But two enormous school referenda by the Germantown and Kewaskum school districts show why state legislators should hold the line on state education spending.

The Germantown and Kewaskum school boards have both decided to put large school referenda to a vote on the November ballot. The referenda are similar in both scope and intent. In Kewaskum, the School Board wants to borrow more than $28.4 million. With an estimated 3.25 percent interest rate for 20 years, that would be a total expenditure of about $38.7 million.

For a little perspective, the Kewaskum School District has had declining enrollment and had a total enrollment of 1,847 kids last school year compared to 1,931 kids in the 2011-12 school year. Kewaskum has a population of about 4,030 people with a median household income of almost $58,000. The school referendum represents spending of about $21,000 per kid, or $9,600 per resident of Kewaskum. It is a lot of money any way one slices it.

The Kewaskum School Board has a list of things they want to spend the money on, including renovating large sections of the schools, upgrading and expanding a security camera system, installing sprinkler systems, remodeling entrances, adding a gym and a lengthy collection of other routine needs.

In Germantown, the School Board will ask the voters to borrow $84 million. Using the same 3.25 percent interest rate for 20 years Kewaskum is estimating, the total expense would be more than $114 million. Again, for perspective, Germantown’s enrollment has been declining slightly. Last school year, the entire district had 3,931 kids compared to 3,994 in the 2011-12 school year. The superintendent projects flat enrollment for the next few years. Germantown has a population of 19,791 with a median household income of almost $75,000. The referendum breaks down to about $29,000 per kid or nearly $6,000 per Germantown resident.

The Germantown referendum is even more ambitious than Kewaskum’s. The School Board wants to spend the money on renovating the elementary schools ($20.7 million), the middle school ($10.3 million), high school ($26.2 million), building a performing arts center ($12.5 million), building a gym and track ($8.6 million) and a swimming pool ($5.8 million).

While Kewaskum Superintendent James Smasal ignored multiple requests to discuss the referendum, Germantown School Superintendent Jeff Holmes was exceedingly open in discussing the referendum. He stressed the Germantown School District has been disciplined stewards of taxpayer money for many years and had delivered high results with the highest average ACT scores of every public school district in the county. Holmes characterizes the referendum as a comprehensive list of spending initiatives the School Board believes is necessary to upgrade the district for the next generation of kids.

It appears the Kewaskum school referendum has the same goal. Both school boards seem to have thrown everything they can think of into their respective referendum instead of asking the voters for multiple, smaller referenda or giving the voters some choices. It is a savvy political strategy that bloats the referendum, but seeks to cobble together enough constituencies to gain passage.

If I lived in either Germantown or Kewaskum, I would vote against either referendum. They are both too large, too expensive and include far too many “nice to haves.”

But this is how it is supposed to work. When the state Legislature passed Act 10, they gave school boards enormous authority to properly manage their budgets within the revenue limits. Then, if after the school boards had managed their resources appropriately and decided that they still needed more money, they can ask the voters for more money through a referendum. If the voters of the local community think their school board has been good stewards and the additional expense is justified, they can vote to raise their own taxes appropriately.

If Germantown residents want to spend $114 million to revamp their schools and build a pool, PAC, etc., then so be it. It is their community, their kids and their taxes. The same goes for Kewaskum. Sitting here in West Bend, I think they would be insane to do so, but it is not my community or my money. This is what local control is all about. And credit goes to those local school boards for putting the referendum on the November presidential ballot to ensure maximum turnout.

As long as local communities have the power to decide to increase spending on their local schools if they so choose, then there is no need for the state government to continually increase state spending on the same thing. The state Legislature did their job supporting school districts when they gave them power over their budgets and a mechanism to ask the voters for more money if they need it. The legislature now has a responsibility to be frugal with state tax dollars and let local taxpayers decide for themselves how much they want to spend on their schools.

“Extremely Careless”

by Owen | 0610, 6 Sep 1616 | Politics | 0 Comments

My column for the West Bend Daily News is online. Here you go:

On the cusp of a long weekend in which the news was dominated by a hurricane landing in Florida and the opening of the college football season, the FBI finally released the notes from its interview of Hillary Clinton regarding her criminal handling of classified material during her time as Secretary of State. Of course, President Barack Obama’s FBI declined to call the Democratic nominee’s actions criminal, but the material they released tells us that either Clinton is a pathological liar who intentionally endangered our national security for personal reasons, or that she is a doddering simpleton. Her history suggests the former, but either conclusion disqualifies her from being president.

The 58 pages released by the FBI are notes from its interview with Clinton. The FBI, in apparent deference to the presidential contender, declined to transcribe the interview or record it as is routine for less powerful suspects, but even the heavily-redacted notes contain dozens of stunning revelations.

One of the most revealing admissions was Clinton directed her henchmen to delete records and wipe the servers after her use of a private email system became public and after there was already an active investigation looking for her records. The New York Times first broke the story of Clinton’s private email server on March 3, 2015. Between March 25 and March 31, Clinton ordered her server wiped clean using an advanced program called BleachBit.

That mass deletion of public and classified records occurred long after several government agencies were conducting official investigations regarding the Benghazi butchery for which Clinton holds some responsibility. Also, at the same time as Clinton was having her emails purged, she was publically telling the public that she wanted her emails released. Simply put, Clinton was actively shredding government documents at the same time she was lying to public about wanting them disclosed.

In another revelation, Clinton claimed to not understand what the letter “C” meant in emails. In government communications, the “C” designation marks the information as “Confidential.” It is a simple practice that is easily understood by thousands of government officials who handle classified material every day. Clinton feigned ignorance and indicated that she “could only speculate it was referencing paragraphs marked in alphabetical order.” One wonders if the FBI agent laughed out loud at this explanation, but the notes do not say if she was asked to point out the paragraphs labeled “A,” “B,” or “D.”

One must remember that Clinton was not just some intern at the State Department. She was the Secretary of State and was one of few Original Classification Authorities, giving her the power to determine what is classified and at what level. Her responsibility was not to just handle classified material appropriately, but to actually determine what was or wasn’t classified.

Also, remember that Clinton was a U.S. Senator for eight years and served on the Senate Armed Services Committee. She routinely read and worked with classified documents including some of our most profound national defense secrets. Clinton is a Yale educated lawyer who has spent a lifetime parsing government documents. The notion that she did not understand what the “C” designation meant is preposterous. It is clear that she lied about her ignorance to avoid admitting that she deliberately mishandled and deleted national secrets in violation of the law.

The jaw-dropping admissions continue, including the fact Clinton’s lawyers sifted her emails without any official oversight, she “lost” at least 13 mobile devices with classified information on them, Clinton claimed to be ignorant of the government’s document retention and disclosure rules and partially blamed her concussion, she did not consider discussions of drone strikes to be confidential, and much, much more.

Read the FBI documents for yourself at https://vault.fbi.gov/hillary-r.-clinton. Then ask yourself if she should be president.

Diversity of thought unwelcome at most universities

by Owen | 0631, 30 Aug 1616 | Culture, Education, Politics | 14 Comments

My column for the West Bend Daily News is online. Here you go:

Universities have often been cauldrons of controversy and social change. They are lodged at the fault line of youthful idealism and ancient knowledge. In recent years, far too many universities have been creating an environment of hate and oppressing free thought in the name of political correctness. One university, at least, is paying the price for going too far.

Last fall the University of Missouri was roiled by controversy. In the wake of several incidents of racism around campus, a group called “Concerned Student 1950,” a reference to the year in which MU first admitted black students, led protests demanding, among other things, the resignation of MU’s president, Thomas Wolfe, for not “doing enough” to combat racism on campus. Black football players supported the protests by refusing to practice until Wolfe resigned.

Despite the fact Wolfe and the rest of the administration were, like most liberals running universities these days, exceedingly willing to pour taxpayer dollars on the smallest fires of racism, the university caved to the students’ demands and forced him out.

This capitulation was followed by the public spectacle of MU professor Melissa Click being shown on video calling for “some muscle” to remove a photojournalist who was covering one of the race protests. She was later caught screaming obscenities at police officers at another protest. Despite one of their professor’s overt acts to suppress media coverage, even with violence, to the protests, MU officials initially stood by her actions. Later, after she was criminally charged, they finally fired her in a close vote.

MU’s actions last year sent a clear message. The people who run that university are unwilling to support the right of all students to be heard and will sacrifice anything to remain in the good graces of the racial provocateurs. The citizens of Missouri responded to that message by sending the smallest freshman class in a decade to the campus. The incoming freshman class declined by more than 1,400 students from last year as part of an overall decline in enrollment of more than 2,200 students. That is a 7-percent drop in one year. This comes as other universities in Missouri, like Missouri State University, University of Missouri-Kansas City and Missouri University of Science and Technology in Rolla, are seeing strong increases in enrollment.

Contrast the stench at MU with the fresh breeze emanating from the University of Chicago. Freshman entering UC were welcomed with a letter from the dean of students informing them of the university’s “commitment to freedom of inquiry and expression.” The letter continues on to define that commitment as not supporting “so-called ‘trigger warnings,’” and saying, “We do not cancel invited speakers because their topics might prove controversial, and we do not condone the creation of intellectual ‘safe spaces’ where individuals can retreat from ideas and perspective at odds with their own.”

That sort of commitment to a rigorous learning environment where all ideas are welcomed to be offered and challenged is supposed to be the ideal. Sadly, most of our universities have created an oppressive culture gilded with comforting words like “diversity” and “sensitivity” that squashes any words or thoughts that do not conform to the current politically correct doctrine. Letters like the one at UC should be welcome every incoming freshman at every American university. Instead, it is an anomaly worthy of note.

Perhaps the reaction to MU’s actions and the letter at UC represent a pivot to our nation’s universities striving for the ideal of being arenas where all ideas are welcomed to be debated and challenged.

Perhaps not, but we can hope.

Thousands of Wisconsin kids are going into the wrong grade

by Owen | 0707, 23 Aug 1616 | Education, Politics - Wisconsin | 1 Comment

My column for the West Bend Daily News is online. Here you go:

You can feel it in the air. The leaves on a few trees are starting to turn and the temperatures dipped down into the 50s this weekend. There is no mistaking it — we are in the waning weeks of summer. In case you had any doubt, over the next few weeks social media will be filled with back-to-school pictures and the giant yellow buses will once again rove the streets.

As kids head back to school, we also turn our thoughts again to the schools to which they are returning and whether or not they are providing the education our kids need, expect and deserve. Much of the educational debate in the past few decades has been focused on making sure our schools work for the kids on the bottom rungs. Educational agendas like No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top are designed to push education from the bottom up so every kid has the opportunity to get an education.

While pushing from the bottom is laudable, much of America’s education system has failed to pull up from the top because of the structure of age-based curriculum. That is the conclusion of a study co-authored by University of Wisconsin-Whitewater Associate Professor of Educational Foundations Scott Peters titled, “How Can So Many Students Be Invisible? Large Percentages of American Students Perform Above Grade Level” and published by the Johns Hopkins University Institute for Educational Policy.

According to the study, an estimated 20-40 percent of K-12 kids perform above their grade level in reading and 11-30 percent perform at least one grade level above in math. And it is not just one grade level. A large percentage of those kids score several grade levels higher than the grade they are in. The data suggests that 8-10 percent of fourth-graders perform at the eighth-grade level in reading and 10 percent of fifth-graders perform at the high school level for reading. The percentages are slightly less for math but the study suggests fifth- and sixth-graders are rarely given access to algebra, geometry, statistics or calculus, creating an artificial barrier to kids excelling further in math.

Specifically in Wisconsin, 45 percent of eighth-graders score at least one year above their grade level in reading and 26 percent do the same in math. In real numbers, “somewhere between 278,000 and 330,000 public-school Wisconsin students across grades K-12 are performing more than a full grade above where they are placed in school.” That is a tremendous number of underserved Wisconsin kids.

What does this study tell us and what are the implications? The study confirms what every parent knows: Kids are all unique. Some sixth-graders struggle and need a lot of support to meet the minimum educational expectations. Some third-graders are bookworms and are reading at an eighth-grade level. This makes it exceedingly difficult to create an educational system that perfectly serves the needs of everyone.

In an ideal world with unlimited resources, every kid would have a team of tutors who would instruct, support and push them as necessary to suit their educational capacities. We do not live in that world, so we must create an educational system that pools resources to provide a quality education to the most kids possible. The study posits most of the kids our current public education system is leaving behind are not at the bottom of the educational spectrum, but at the top.

Our public education policy leaders need to immediately look for ways to provide accelerated learning opportunities to kids performing above their grade levels. This means more flexible scheduling and movement between grades. Also, public schools should aggressively adopt the various distance-learning tools that allow kids greater access to diverse learning opportunities. Long term, this may necessitate a movement away from neighborhood schools to central campuses that can include access to more opportunities for kids of all grade levels.

But while progress can be made in our public schools, no single system can serve everyone. This is why support for school choice, which encourages a broader education ecosystem capable of meeting the increasingly diverse needs of our kids, is vital for providing an education suitably supportive and challenging for all kids.

Our educational system has come a long way in the past few decades in meeting the needs of lower-performing kids. We have a lot more work to do to push the kids who are already performing above expectations.

Candidates’ tax plans reveal their priorities

by Owen | 0620, 16 Aug 1616 | Economy, Politics | 1 Comment

My column for the West Bend Daily News is online. Here you go:

In an effort to look seriously at the presidential election that smells like a dumpster fire fueled by shredded emails and bad hair, an evaluation of Donald Trump’s and Hillary Clinton’s tax plans reveal very different approaches to governing.

It must be noted that tax plans released during a political campaign are pieces of fiction. They are almost never enacted as promised because of the legislative process and the math, based on fanciful financial projections and dubious notions of human behavior, never adds up. A candidate’s plan is more of a tax manifesto laying out their priorities and revealing how they view the tax code.

On income tax, Trump would cut the number of income tax brackets from 7 to 3 and cut the highest rate from 39.6 percent to 33 percent. Clinton would not change much in the income tax code except to confiscate a 4-percent tax surcharge for people earning more than $5 million per year and implementing rules to forbid people earning more than $1 million per year from paying less than an effective 30 percent income tax rate.

Both Clinton and Trump would offer more tax benefits for childcare. The difference is Trump proposes allowing parents to deduct childcare expenses, which reduces the tax burden for those paying income taxes, while Clinton is proposing a tax credit for childcare, which would be paid to parents even if they do not pay income taxes.

Both candidates have also voiced staunch support for not increasing taxes on America’s lowest earners. Currently 45.3 percent of Americans do not pay anything in federal income taxes. In fact, the average person in the bottom 40 percent of income earners actually receives more than $600 through various tax-redistribution schemes like the Earned Income Tax Credit. Both candidates are promising to maintain that system.

Overall, Trump’s plan would more aggressively reform the complexity of the federal income tax code and reduce the tax burden for far more Americans. Clinton’s plan would keep taxes where they are for most Americans and increase taxes on the highest earners. Both candidates firmly support an overly progressive income tax code where a huge number of Americans view it is a source of income instead of an obligation to pay their fair share to fund our government.

Trump’s tax plan calls for eliminating the death tax while Clinton’s plan would increase the rate and make it apply to more people. Currently, the federal government confiscates 40 percent of people’s estates if they are valued at more than $5.45 million for an individual or $10.9 million for a married couple. Clinton would increase the rate to 45 percent and make it applicable to estates valued at $3.5 million and $7 million, respectively.

The notion that the government should seize an enormous chunk of a dead person’s wealth that was accumulated over a lifetime is a detestable practice rooted in the greed of politicians and envy of constituents. Trump is dead right on this one.

The candidates’ plans for business taxes are starkly different. At 35 percent, the United States has one of the highest corporate tax rates of any advanced economy. Clinton would leave the tax rate where it is, but implement regulations designed to punish American corporations for taking measures to reduce their tax burden, like tax inversions and interest deductions. Clinton’s plan would use the tax code to further flog corporations for having the temerity to do business in our nation.

Trump would lower the corporate tax rate to a more reasonable 15 percent. He would also impose that rate for other types of businesses like partnerships and limited liability corporations. Currently, profits from most noncorporate businesses are taxed at the owners’ individual income tax rate. For successful businesses, this could be as high as the top tax rate of 39.6 percent in the current tax code. By taxing profits at 15 percent, it would represent a massive tax decrease for a huge number of American businesses. The lower corporate tax rate would also encourage America’s largest multinational corporations to repatriate foreign profits and invest in America.

There are more details of the candidates’ respective tax plans, but the themes are the same. Trump intends to simplify and reduce the tax burden for Americans, which will stimulate the national economy out of the Barack Obama malaise. Clinton would increase taxes for Americans and use the tax code to further punish Americans and their businesses.

Obama’s ransom to Iran

by Owen | 0723, 9 Aug 1616 | Foreign Affairs, Politics | 4 Comments

My column for the West Bend Daily News is online. Here you go:

We have all heard the idiom, “If it walks like a duck, swims like a duck and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck.” That certainly seems to be the case regarding the hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of cash the Obama administration sent to Iran before the nation released American prisoners. Despite their vehement protestations, it sure looks like the Obama administration sent a massive ransom to a terrorist-supporting nation to free American hostages in violation of American law and policy.

Last week the Wall Street Journal broke the story that the United States sent $400 million in cash to Iran in an unmarked cargo plane Jan. 17. That was the same day Iran released five American hostages. America also released seven Iranians who were in jail or facing charges in America.

According to the Obama administration, the Americans were released by Iran as part of a prisoner exchange and the cash payment to Iran was part of a separate deal running in parallel to both the nuclear negotiations and the prisoner exchange. The payment was part of a settlement that goes back to the Iranian hostage crisis in 1979.

When Iran took Americans hostage that time, President Jimmy Carter severed diplomatic relations with Iran and froze all Iranian assets in America. Once the hostages were finally returned, America returned some of the money and established a tribunal in The Hague to settle the rest of it. One issue to be resolved was a $400 million payment the former Shah of Iran made for military equipment before he was ousted from power. After the uprising, the U.S. banned the delivery of military equipment, but kept the $400 million.

In the 36 years since that happened, the case has wormed its way through The Hague and was reportedly nearing resolution through a binding arbitration process. The Obama administration expected to lose the case and be forced to pay Iran as much as $10 billion, so they reached out to Iran and agreed to settle for $1.7 billion. The $400 million paid to Iran this January was a down payment on the settlement.

Such are the technical details, but they do not tell the whole story. While the negotiations about the nuclear deal, prisoner exchange and financial settlement were being handled by separate parts of the administration, they were all clearly linked, and being handled by the same people in Iran. The Iranian government has told the world as much.

According to the Iranian press and military leaders, they considered the payment a ransom for the American hostages. And according to the Rev. Saeed Abedini, one of the American hostages released, they were held for hours at the airport before being released as guards told them they could not be released until the plane with the cash arrived. Abedini says that the guards told them they would not be released if the other plane failed to arrive. After the plane with the cash arrived, the Americans were released.

Furthermore, it is clear the Obama administration understood the American hostages would not be released if they did not send the cash. First, there is the timing. The $400 million was purportedly part of a settlement for a dispute stretching back to 1979, but they had to send it on the day the prisoners were released. In the more than 12,000 days since the dispute started, why that day if not because the hostage release was contingent on it?

Second, rather than sending the money to Iran as a normal bank transaction, the Obama administration converted hundreds of millions of dollars to Euros, Swiss Francs and other foreign currencies specifically in order to circumvent the law prohibiting U.S. transactions with Iran in dollars. They also structured the deal in a way to avoid briefing Congress on it before Congress voted on the Iran nuclear deal. Despite its claim all of these negotiations were separate, the Obama administration clearly viewed them as unrenderable.

As more facts about the Obama administration’s dealings with Iran come to light, it is clear America’s interests, policies and laws were subverted or subordinated to Barack Obama’s unyielding ambition to notch a foreign policy success after two terms of failed policies.

Wisconsin must make the hard decisions

by Owen | 0623, 2 Aug 1616 | Politics - Wisconsin | 1 Comment

My column for the West Bend Daily News is online. Here you go:

You have probably read the headlines by now — “State transportation budget faces $1 billion shortfall!” they scream. It is part of the well-financed, orchestrated campaign by the road builders and their supporters to squeeze more taxes out of Wisconsin’s taxpayers in the next budget.

The root of the breathless headlines is a memo from the Legislative Fiscal Bureau that shows the state would fall $939 million short (the headlines round up) if we spend as much in the next budget as we do in the current one. The LFB is a number-crunching body that simply answers the questions posed to it by members of the Legislature. In this case, the question came from Rep. John Nygren, the Republican Assembly co-chairman of the Joint Finance Committee, and he asked the LFB to include two key assumptions.

First, the LFB assumes the state will not use any debt whatsoever. That accounts for more than $855 million of the projected shortfall. The second assumption is that the level of spending matches only the second year of the current budget spending. Wisconsin has a biennial budget and the current transportation budget actually spent a bit more in the first year than the second. That assumption accounts for the remaining $83.3 million of the shortfall. More accurately stated, the LFB memo states the state would fall more than $855 million short if it tried to match transportation spending in the next budget without taking on any debt.

The road builders and their allies, like Nygren, are using this projected shortfall to begin advocating for a tax increase on Wisconsinites. The only way to fill the budget pothole, they contend, is to raise taxes. Nothing could be further from the truth.

The first assumption that needs to be addressed is the one of debt. While paying for things as we go without any debt is admirable for some pieces of the budget, it makes little sense for large capital projects. A good deal of the spending in the transportation budget is slated for massive infrastructure projects, like rebuilding the Zoo Interchange, which will be used for decades. It makes perfect fiscal sense to spread the spending for those projects over those same decades. We will certainly need to debate the appropriate level of overall debt and be prudent in managing the state’s debt service, but some debt is both necessary and sensible.

The second assumption that needs to be torn down is that the state cannot address the alleged shortfall through some policy changes instead of resorting to tax increases. For example, Wisconsin’s prevailing wage laws inflate the cost of construction by mandating the state pay inflated wages for labor instead of being able to pay the local market wage for the same labor. State legislators took the step to repeal the prevailing wage law for local governments last year, but kept them in place for the state. While the actual amount of savings is difficult to estimate, studies show the state could save hundreds of millions of dollars in each budget by simply paying normal market wages for construction projects.

Another example of ways to fill the shortfall without raising taxes rests in the everyday decisions made in designing and planning transportation projects. Gov. Scott Walker cited the example in his letter to Transportation Secretary Mark Gottlieb that the state saved $580 million on the Zoo Interchange through some changes to the design. Imagine if similar design changes were considered on every project.

The final assumption the tax increasers always ignore is that Wisconsin must spend as much or more than it always has. It does not. The fact Wisconsin is a state with high government spending and high taxes is the result of millions of decisions made by Wisconsin politicians for decades. It is a choice. It is also a choice to tax and spend less, like most other states do.

Wisconsin should make the choice to spend less on transportation. The state could make the choice to spend within our means. Would there be consequences? Of course. Some of those consequences may be of no consequence at all. For example, a report from a consortium of environmental groups highlights the fact the $836 million project to expand I-90 between Madison and Illinois was based on 2008 traffic estimates that said the number of cars would increase by 29 percent by 2010 and double by 2013, as compared to a baseline of 2000. In 2012, the number of cars had increased by only 1 percent since 2000, yet the expansion continues apace despite the fact the traffic estimated used to justify it was woefully wrong. This is happening with projects all over Wisconsin. Suspending this one project would save hundreds of millions of dollars.

Repealing the prevailing wage laws for the state, implementing design changes and reconsidering projects that were based on faulty projections would save hundreds of millions of dollars each. That projected shortfall disappears pretty quickly by only plucking the low-hanging fruit highlighted here. Imagine if the smart people in the Legislature actually rolled up their sleeves and put some effort into saving the taxpayers’ money.

Taxing and spending is easy. Discipline and math is hard. Be hard, Wisconsin. Be hard.

Obama creates path for a nuclear Iran

by Owen | 0713, 26 Jul 1616 | Foreign Affairs, Politics | 0 Comments

My column for the West Bend Daily News is online. Here it is:

While political pundits and talking heads posing as serious people passionately debated whether or not Ted Cruz should have endorsed Donald Trump last week, we learned that the deal our current president made with Iran had secret provisions that made a dangerous deal even more perilous.

Given the fact that virtually every foreign policy initiative by President Barack Obama has ended in disaster (Libya, ISIS, Iraq, Russia, Ukraine, Boko Haram, etc.), he set out to solve one of our nation’s most enduring and difficult foreign policy problems: Iran. For years, America has sought to curb the nuclear ambitions of terrorist-supporting Iran by isolating it through sanctions and pressure through international organizations.

Obama told us there was a better way. He engaged Iran in talks and ended up with an agreement he said would protect the world from a nuclear Iran for generations to come. He was wrong at the time and the recent revelations show he might have actually accelerated Iran’s nuclear program.

Up until last year, Iran was on the proverbial ropes. International sanctions drastically limited its ability to sell its primary export, oil, on the world market and the collapse in the price of oil was further hurting its economy. This drastically limited the influx of hard currency into Iran and made it tough for it to fund its nuclear ambitions. Obama changed all of that. In exchange for Iran’s promise to cut back the number of centrifuges to a few older models, ship some of its enriched uranium out of the country and allow international inspectors, Obama lifted the sanctions to allow billions of dollars to flow into Iran and released millions more in Iranian funds that were frozen since Iran tookAmerican hostages.

Obama soothed Americans by promising, “We have now cut off every single path that Iran could have used to build a bomb.” That was a lie before we knew of the secret side deal.

The core problem with the deal is it requires that Iran will live up to its promises despite decades of provocations, funding of terrorists, creating fake companies to get around sanctions, stonewalling inspectors and lying about its nuclear program. Indeed, in the few months since the deal was signed, Iran has stonewalled more inspectors and been implicated in cyber attacks on American infrastructure.

But even if one lives in Obama’s fantasy world where Iran can be trusted, he cut a side deal, giving Iran a faster path to a nuclear weapon. According to a report by the Associated Press, the secret side deal allows Iran to begin replacing its old, less-efficient centrifuges with far more advanced centrifuges after 10 years. While Iran will still have fewer centrifuges than it does now, the newer models will allow it to enrich uranium at more than twice the rate that it can do now. This would reduce its breakout time — the time it would take to create enough enriched uranium to make a bomb — from the current estimate of a year to less than six months.

This means that Obama’s deal with Iran lifts sanctions allowing Iran to bring in billions of dollars to fund its nuclear ambitions for the next decade, and then use the money to buy equipment that can create a nuclear weapon faster than it can now. And that assumes Iran abides by the agreement and does not start installing more-advanced centrifuges even sooner.

Despite Obama’s assurances he has “cut off every single path that Iran could have used to build a bomb,” he has made America and the world less safe by actually allowing Iran access to the money and equipment necessary to enter the nuclear club even sooner.

GAB’s successors off to shaky start

by Owen | 0752, 19 Jul 1616 | Politics - Wisconsin | 0 Comments

My column for the West Bend Daily News is online. Here it is:

Late last year, the Wisconsin Legislature euthanized the Government Accountability Board and it breathed its last breath at the end of June. Unfortunately, the early decisions being made by its replacement committees are not comforting.

By the middle of the last decade, Wisconsin had enough of the state’s Elections and Ethics boards. For years, they were mired with bias and corruption to the point that nobody had confidence in them any longer. To remedy this, the Wisconsin Legislature created the Government Accountability Board and Gov. Jim Doyle signed it into existence in 2007.

The theory of the GAB was great: Six retired judges, chosen because they had presumably aged to the point of impartiality, would oversee a crackerjack staff of unbiased functionaries to oversee and enforce Wisconsin’s election and ethics laws. The reality fell short of the theory.

During almost a decade of existence, the GAB devolved into a worse version of its predecessors with indifferent or addled judges losing control of a rogue staff that took every opportunity to twist the system in favor of liberals and punish conservatives. This culminated in the GAB’s participation in the illegal and unconstitutional John Doe persecutions of conservatives all over Wisconsin.

The Wisconsin Legislature responded to the abuses of the GAB by separating its functions again into a state Elections Commission and Ethics Commission. These are created under a more realistic operating theory that every human has biases and it is better to balance and check them instead of trying to find people without them.

The members of both of these commissions have been selected giving each major political party equal representation and they have begun to organize themselves and hire their staffs. This is where the early indications are troubling.

First, in May, the Elections Commission nominated Michael Haas, who spent years as the administrator of the Elections Division of the defunct GAB, as its first administrator. Given that the reason the Elections Board now exists is because of outrage at the actions taken by the GAB, its decision to select someone from that discredited organization to lead its staff is a massive red flag. Haas has been very open in saying he will be fair, but the Commission’s unwillingness to find someone without that baggage is concerning.

Last week the Ethics Commission made the Elections Commissions’ decision look like one of Solomon’s. They unanimously elected former Wisconsin Democratic Attorney General Peg Lautenschlager as chairwoman of the commission.

The fact that Lautenschlager inhabits the kooky fringe of the Democratic Party (just look her up on YouTube to hear her in her own words) is bothersome enough. It demonstrates that the Democrats who appointed her are not even attempting to appoint fair-minded people to the commission. But more outrageous is that Lautenschalger was voted out of office by her own party for ethical violations.

In 2004, then-Attorney General Lautenschlager drove her state car into a ditch while trying to drive home to Fond du Lac from Madison while drunk. She pleaded guilty to DUI. Her abuse of a state car brought other ethical violations to light. She had declared her home in Fond du Lac as the official office of the attorney general of Wisconsin so she could use a state car to drive back and forth to Madison on the taxpayers’ dime. She still maintained her real office in Madison, but the bureaucratic designation opened the door to her receiving thousands of dollars’ worth of personal benefit at taxpayers’ expense. The state Ethics Board at the time found her guilty of an ethical violation for using a state vehicle for personal use and she paid a pittance of $922 for penalties and reimbursements. The Ethics Board’s weak punishment for such an egregious ethical violation was one of the myriad of poor decisions that led to the eventual creation of the GAB.

When Lautenschlager ran for re-election in 2006, she was defeated in the Democratic primary by Kathleen Falk after her own party decided they could not stomach someone with such poor ethical standards being the top law enforcement official in the state. A decade later and many of those same Democrats want the same person to lead the agency tasked with enforcing ethics for politicians all over the state. How times have changed.

By law, the Chairperson of the Ethics Commission must rotate between the Democrats and the Republicans and the Democrats won the first selection through a drawing. They must choose a chairperson from one of the existing commission members. The first outrage is that Lautenschlager, ethically challenged as she is, is on the commission in the first place. The second outrage is that she ran unopposed for the chairperson’s slot from among the Democrats on the commission. The third outrage is that she was elected unanimously. All the Republicans on the commission voted for her, too, including West Bend’s own former assemblywoman, Pat Strachota.

Closing the GAB and creating the new commissions was the necessary and correct thing to do. That agency was too riddled with corruption and failure to continue to exist. But the new commissions that have taken its place are off to a very rocky start. The people of Wisconsin must continue to watch the watchdogs to ensure we have a fair and ethical political process in our state.

National Insecurity

by Owen | 0628, 12 Jul 1616 | Law, Politics | 0 Comments

My column for the West Bend Daily News is online. Here it is:

Late in 1971, the USS Halibut, a highly modified nuclear attack submarine, snuck through a shallow channel between the Kuril Islands into the Sea of Okhotsk. It was the middle of the Cold War and the Halibut was deep into the roaming territory of the Soviet Union’s Pacific fleet on a mission about which only a handful of people knew.

The Halibut was seeking an undersea communications cable no more than 5 inches in diameter that the Americans believed would be carrying unencrypted communications from Soviet military leaders in Moscow to their facilities in Petropavlovsk on the Kamchatka peninsula. The Americans found the cable and placed a tap on it that recorded communications for years. It was an intelligence coup that took a considerable amount of money, time, and bravado to achieve that reverberated for years during the Cold War without the Soviet Union, or most Americans, ever knowing it happened.

All that a hostile nation needed to intercept years’ worth of classified and unclassified communications of America’s Secretary of State was a mediocre hacker with a laptop sipping a latte at his local coffee shop. That is the reality that FBI Director James Comey made clear after concluding the investigation into former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s email use.

The framework of Clinton’s email management has been known for some time, but the details are even more shocking. Against State Department rules and federal law, Clinton chose to set up and use a private email system for her official correspondence rather than using the secure system provided by the government.

According to the FBI, Clinton’s private email system included several servers and multiple devices — none of which had any more security than what is commonly used in the private sector. With this system, Clinton sent and received tens of thousands of emails. More than 100 of those emails were deemed classified at the time they were sent, which is in direct contradiction to Clinton’s statements.

Using her private email system, Clinton sent many of these emails while in nations that are hostile to the United States and using their networks. Barring utter incompetence by those foreign nations, everything she sent and received was intercepted. One hacker has already credibly claimed to have hacked Clinton’s email system and it is naïve to think that almost every sophisticated foreign power has not done the same.

Before turning over the emails from her private system to the government, as required by law, Clinton’s lawyers sifted through the emails even though they were not cleared to view classified material. Even though Clinton claimed that she had turned over all work-related emails, the investigation identified thousands of missing emails that Clinton did not turn over.

After all of that, Comey disgraced himself and his agency by not recommending charging Clinton because the FBI claims she did not intend to break the law. Instead, they said, she was simply “extremely careless.” The fact remains that America has been prosecuting people for breaching national security for as long as we have been a nation whether they intended to or not. The laws that Clinton broke do not require intent in order to be broken.

Even though intent is not relevant, it is clear that Clinton did intend to break the law. The mere act of setting up a private email system for her official communications was an intentional act to circumvent all of the laws that require her communications to be both secure and archived for future scrutiny. It was that scrutiny that she wanted to avoid. She wanted to hide her emails so that investigators and the public would only ever be allowed to see what Clinton allowed them to see. When Clinton was scrutinized by the FBI, she lied and obstructed the investigation. Clinton was far more concerned with the American public seeing her communications when she was a high official of our government than she was with our enemies seeing them.

The evidence is clear that America’s former Secretary of State intentionally and willfully concealed her communications, including classified emails, from any scrutiny from our government and the people while leaving those same communications exposed to being read by hostile powers. At best, she was criminally negligent. At worst, the intentionally subverted our national security for her own personal gain. Either way, she is a criminal.

And yet, a Democratic president with a Democratic attorney general have refused to charge the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee after their FBI director debased himself for them. In failing to charge Hillary Clinton for her actions, this administration has forfeited our nation’s security for the political ambitions of the Democratic Party.

“The tree of liberty must be refreshed…”

by Owen | 0609, 5 Jul 1616 | Culture, Firearms, Politics | 11 Comments

My column for the West Bend Daily News is online. I’ve spent the past few days in the cradle of American rebellion and walked the path that patriots trod. It was a moving experience – especially when all of us were celebrating Independence Day.

Here you go:

The Fourth of July is a time of reflection and celebration for Americans. As our nation suffers another bout of agitation at the hands of bullies and opportunists to restrict our right to keep and bear arms, a look back at the Declaration of Independence and the events leading up to it serves as a healthy reminder for why our Founders understood the need to protect that right from our new government in the first place.

The Declaration of Independence is one of the most stirring and consequential documents in history. While its official purpose was to list the Americans’ grievances against the British government and inform said government the colonies were breaking off into a new nation, Thomas Jefferson’s beautiful affirmation of individual rights and self-governance is unparalleled.

In three short paragraphs, the Declaration lays out the argument that individual people have unalienable rights and that governments are instituted by the consent of the governed to protect those rights. When a government becomes destructive to those rights, it is both the right and duty of the governed to change or overthrow that government and institute a new one. The truth of this argument is the cornerstone of our Republic and the wellspring of our American Experiment.

But the men who signed the Declaration of Independence knew that the task of actually overthrowing a government was not done with petitions or speeches. It was done with blood and iron. Jefferson conveys this truth in the fourth paragraph of the Declaration when he wrote, “…it is their right [the People’s], it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”

By the time the Declaration was written, much blood had already been spilt trying to cast off the yoke of an oppressive government. Six years prior, in response to continued agitation over heavy taxes imposed by the Townshend Acts, British soldiers who were quartered in Boston gunned down protesting citizens, killing five of them, in what became known as the Boston Massacre.

Conditions continued to deteriorate between the government and the governed. In April 1775, British soldiers marched out of Boston to Concord with the intent of seizing weapons that were being used by the colonists. The battles of Lexington and Concord ensued. After killing eight militiamen in Lexington, the British pushed on to Concord and torched the few remaining weapons that had not already been spirited away. As the British marched back to Boston, the famous Minutemen, called that because they could grab the guns in their homes and respond to a threat at a minute’s notice, swarmed through the woods and harassed the British column until they reached the safety of their Navy.

In retaliation, the British laid siege to Boston. On June 17, 1775, the Americans fought a pitched battle against the occupying force as the British moved to fortify the hills around Boston. During the Battle of Bunker Hill, the British regulars trudged up a bloody hill to force out entrenched American militiamen to win the day. For the price of their victory, the British suffered more than a thousand casualties and came to the realization that the price of continued subjugation would be very high.

The men who wrote and ratified the Declaration of Independence, and later, the Bill of Rights, knew full well that it is a bloody business to battle a tyrannical government, but it is sometimes the only way to preserve the rights of the people. They also knew full well that if it were not for the arms that the Minutemen and thousands of other Americans brought with them to fight the British, the Revolution would have been lost.

The reason that our right to keep and bear arms is preserved in our Bill of Rights is precisely to preserve our ability to “throw off such Government.” An armed citizenry can never be subjugated except by its own consent.

As our politicians debate more gun control laws using arguments about hunting or self-defense, we must remind them that the use of firearms for those purposes is a beneficial byproduct of our right to keep and bear arms. But the reason for preserving that right is far more important than those uses. Our right to keep and bear arms must be preserved as the last bastion of defense of our liberty.

Brexit means a return to British rule

by Owen | 0758, 28 Jun 1616 | Foreign Affairs | 8 Comments

My column for the West Bend Daily News is online. Here you go:

As America prepares to celebrate the 240th anniversary of the day she declared her independence from Great Britain, the mother country has declared her own independence from the European Union. In doing so, the British people have reasserted their God-given right to self-governance.

Haunted by a century of hot and cold wars that wiped out generations and destroyed civilizations, Europeans created the European Union in 1993 with the goal of uniting Europe into a single geo-political unit with a common economy, currency, laws and regulatory structure. The EU is the latest of several economic and political confederations that have been embarked upon in Europe since World War II. The concept of a federation of states is certainly not uncommon. In fact, it is a principle upon which our own nation is founded.

Britain’s membership in the EU was always a bit at arm’s length. While every other member of the EU joined in a single currency, Britain successfully opted out of the Euro and maintained its own currency. Perhaps Sir Winston Churchill knew his people best when he wrote in the preface to the first volume of his “History of the English Speaking Peoples,” “It (Britain) is very accessible to the invader, whether he comes in peace or war, as pirate or merchant, conqueror or missionary. Those who dwell there are not insensitive to any shift of power, any change of faith, or even fashion, on the mainland, but they give to every practice, every doctrine that comes to it from abroad, its own peculiar turn and imprint.” Indeed, they do.

For centuries, British foreign policy was based upon maintaining a balance of power on the mainland of Europe so that no single power could overwhelm Britain. Suave and skilled British statesmen continually manipulated continental friendships, grudges and power with the overriding goal of protecting the independence of Britain as a free state.

In one view, Britain’s involvement in the EU was an extension of this ancient policy. By participating in, and fostering the growth of, a united Europe in a confederation that respected the independence of the nation states that comprise it, Britain could further its national interests. The financial and merchant classes in Britain certainly stood to gain from an open European economy. And by maintaining its currency, Britain maintained its economic independence.

But then something went wrong. As the EU grew in membership and power, the powers in Brussels began asserting more power over the member states. Moving well beyond just promoting common trade rules and standards, the EU has taken to regulating the smallest facets of life, including things like bathroom fixtures, automobile features and farm animals. In doing so, the EU government has usurped much of the power heretofore held by each member nation’s elected government.

For the British, the issue that finally spurned their decision to leave the EU was immigration. By EU law, people are allowed to move freely to any nation in the EU once they gain entry. This means that when Greece, Germany, Spain, or any other EU nation decides to allow a flood of refugees and immigrants into their nations, Britain has no ability to stop those refugees and immigrants from settling in Britain. A nation that lacks the authority or power to control its own borders is no nation at all.

So the British have voted to leave the EU and return to being an independent sovereign nation like the United States. While many folks are panicking over the prospect of an independent Britain, they need not. The British people ruled themselves for centuries before the EU came into existence and they will have no problem remembering how to fully rule themselves again.

More than likely, the EU will punish Britain for leaving with tariffs and other economic penalties. The EU leadership has already signaled that they must punish Britain for leaving in order to threaten the remaining EU nations from following Britain’s lead. In doing so, the EU will likely plunge itself into a recession as they prioritize the preservation of power in Brussels over the economic well-being of its citizens, thus reaffirming Britain’s reason for leaving in the first place.

As far as the United States is concerned, we should stand shoulder to shoulder with our British brothers and sisters in celebration of their return to independence. The special relationship between our peoples, based upon common language, laws and traditions, has endured for generations and will continue in this new era. And now our peoples share something new: We have both cast off the oppression of a government from across the waves because we wanted to govern ourselves.

Happy Independence Day, indeed.

The tragedy in Orlando

by Owen | 0643, 14 Jun 1616 | Culture | 14 Comments

My column for the West Bend Daily News is online. Here you go:

The United States has suffered its most deadly Islamic terrorist attack since Sept. 11, 2001. Many details are not yet known, but what we do know is horrific. We grieve for the dead and pray for the wounded. America mourns.

At about 2 a.m. Saturday, a man called 911 in Orlando, Florida, to pledge his allegiance to the Islamic State. After hanging up, that man began shooting people inside the packed Pulse club, a well-known gay bar. At the time of this writing, 50 people are dead and 53 are reported wounded, but more may die as a result of their wounds. About three hours after the gunman began firing, he was shot and killed by police.

The killer was an American Muslim man from Fort Pierce, Florida, whose parents are from Afghanistan. He legally purchased a rifle and a handgun several days before the attack. Reports are the FBI investigated the killer twice in the past few years, but did not find enough evidence to charge him with anything.

Being a presidential election year, many interest groups have immediately assumed an attack posture to use the attack in Orlando to their advantage. Some have already started using it to raise funds for their various causes.

The anti-Second Amendment folks are already using this act of Islamic terror to advocate for gun control. Hillary Clinton, the assumptive Democratic candidate for president, said in a statement that the attack “reminds us once more that weapons of war have no place on our streets.” Of course, almost every weapon is used in war including shotguns, knives and bolt-action rifles, so the distinction is an arbitrary one.

Gay rights advocates are saying that since the attack was in a gay bar, it represents another instance of hate against the LGBT community. They are correct in that the attack is a manifestation of a particularly virulent hatred by the Islamists. The Islamic State considers gay people to be abhorrent and has been cruelly killing them by burning, drowning, throwing them off of buildings, etc. for years. The importation of their hateful ideology to American soil is going to have horrible consequences for many communities.

Speaking of importation, immigration and refugee interest groups are using the attack to advance their causes. Advocates for less-restrictive immigration and refugee policies are trumpeting the fact the killer was a natural born American citizen. Advocates for more-restrictive immigration and refugee policies are pointing out the killer’s radical Islamic terrorist ideology was imported either by his parents or others and allowing more people who share that ideology to enter our nation will end up in more dead Americans.

Foreign policy wonks and critics of the Barack Obama administration are pointing out the Islamic State rose out of the vacuum Obama created after abandoning Iraq. Years of feckless and feeble foreign policy by the Obama administration, including during the years in which Clinton was secretary of state, have allowed the Islamic State to flourish to the point that it is now inspiring attacks on American soil.

There will be a time for all of these policy and cultural debates and they are important to have. Particularly as we are in the season when we choose our next president and the direction of our country, we must evaluate the policies that may or may not have contributed to the massacre in Orlando and make some decisions. Yes, there will be a time for all that. There is a time for everything.

But now is the time to mourn and pray. It is the time to clean up the blood and hug the families of the victims. Then, once all of the dead are properly buried, it will be time to debate our path forward as a people.

Kids are having fewer kids

by Owen | 0644, 7 Jun 1616 | Culture | 0 Comments

My column for the West Bend Daily News is online. It’s good to see some good news! Here you go:

Kids having kids has long been a societal problem that leads to so many other problems. The pregnancies are almost always unplanned and the task of raising the child falls disproportionately on teen moms. The moms often struggle to advance their education or start a gainful career and rely heavily on taxpayer support. The children of teen parents enter the world at a disadvantage to those born to parents further along in life. It has been exhaustively documented that it is generally better for parents, kids and society as a whole if people wait until they are emotionally and financially mature before conceiving.

Considering the generational impact of kids having kids, the great news is teen birth rate in the U.S. has declined to a record low according to a report from the National Center for Health Statistics. At 24.2 births per 1,000 teen girls, teenagers are having babies at the lowest rate since the government began tracking in 1940.

The overall rate has steadily declined since 1990 with a slight uptick in 2006. Since then, the teen birth rate is down an astounding 42 percent with declines in the teen birth rate among non-whites leading the way. The decline among Hispanic teens was the greatest at 50 percent, with Asian and Pacific Islanders next at 48 percent, then black teens at 44 percent, and finally white teens at 36 percent.

Also, the data indicates the decline in the teen birth rate is accelerating. The teen birth rate among teens in the younger than 15-17 age group has declined at a faster rate (50 percent) than that of older teens (39 percent). This indicates that younger teens are even less likely to have babies than their older peers.

The reasons for this decline are revealing. The dramatic decline in the teen birth rate is not a result of an increase in abortions. In fact, abortions are also down by nearly the same percentage over the same period. The simple answer for the decline in the teen birth rate is that teens are getting pregnant less. The teen pregnancy rate has also nearly halved over the same timeframe. Teens are getting pregnant less because of better contraception and because they are having less sex. Why? The answers are revealing.

While the overall rate of contraceptive use by teens has remained stubbornly stable for years, the use of more effective methods has increased. In particular, a Centers for Disease Control analysis found the use of long-acting reversible contraceptives like IUDs and implants increased by almost 1,800 percent in the past decade. These contraceptives, while generally more effective than some other forms of contraception, also negate the need for a teen to both affirmatively use contraception and use it properly. Unfortunately, these contraceptives also leave the teens completely vulnerable to sexually transmitted diseases. Young people aged 15-24 account for half of all new STDs and 1 in 4 sexually active adolescent girls have an STD like chlamydia or gonorrhea.

Teenagers are also simply having less sex. According to the National Survey of Family Growth Data, the percentage of unmarried teenage girls who reported they have had sex declined from 51 percent in 1988 to 44 percent in 2013. Part of the reason for that may be economic. Birth rates tend to decline during down economies and the U.S. economy has been in a funk for a decade.

But there also appears to be a cultural shift occurring that discourages teen sex that is being driven partially by pop culture and television. According to a report by Brookings, reality shows like “16 and Pregnant” and “Teen Mom” may be responsible for almost a third of the decline in the teen birth rate since they started airing. The notion is that as teens see the real struggles of a teen raising a child, they are less likely to put themselves into a position of being a teen parent.

Whatever the causes, the sustained and significant decline in the teen pregnancy and birth rates is a positive and welcome development of this millennium. Kudos to today’s teens for being more responsible with their sex lives than their parents were.

Not very civil forfeitures

by Owen | 0711, 31 May 1616 | Law, Politics | 1 Comment

My column for the West Bend Daily News is online. Hopefully it’s an issue upon which there should be omnipartisan agreement. Here it is:

The Internal Revenue Service has been in the news a lot lately for targeting conservative organizations in an effort to silence them. What has gone largely unnoticed, however, is how the IRS is also ruining the lives of average Americans by aggressively seizing their money for dubious reasons. It is something that can, and should, be stopped immediately.

For years, the IRS has had the power to seize assets involved with a crime. For example, the IRS can seize the money in the bank accounts of convicted drug dealers. But the IRS can also seize the assets of people who are only suspected of committing a crime through federal civil forfeiture laws. This is where the real problem comes in by putting innocent citizens in the position of having to prove their innocence in order to get their money back from the federal government.

With the federal civil forfeiture laws, the IRS can seize assets based only on the suspicion that a crime has taken place. There is no burden for the IRS to prove they have probable cause to a judge or charge the targeted person with anything. All that needs to happen is a few IRS bureaucrats decide something illegal might be going on and they can seize every dollar from the targeted person. Once the assets are seized, the IRS initiates a civil forfeiture procedure where the victim must defend themself. Unlike a criminal case, the IRS has a much lower burden of proof. They must only prove a crime was committed by a “preponderance of the evidence,” not by a “reasonable doubt,” which is the standard for criminal cases. Also, the defendant is not afforded all the same rights and protections in a civil proceeding as they would in a criminal prosecution.

These civil forfeiture proceedings are no small matter. The process often takes well over a year and the defendant must spend thousands of dollars and countless hours battling the IRS. Meanwhile, the IRS continues to hold the defendant’s assets, leaving the defendant bereft of the funds needed for his or her defense. And unlike criminal cases, defendants are not afforded a court-appointed attorney if they cannot afford one. When it is all said and done, the defendant may recover his or her seized funds, but only after a tremendous amount of time, effort and money.

One particular area of growth in civil forfeitures is in targeting so-called “structuring.” Under federal law, banks must report all transactions of more than $10,000 to the IRS. Criminals know this, so they will often “structure” their banking practices in a way to avoid that requirement by making many transactions for $9,000 or $9,500 instead of one big transaction. The IRS looks for this kind of behavior as an indication of criminal activity and will move to seize the funds through civil forfeiture laws without even knowing what kind of criminal activity might be happening.

You see, there is absolutely nothing illegal about conducting a bunch of banking transactions for $9,000. It may be a sign of illegal activity, or it may just be people doing nothing untoward at all. Many small businesses that use cash, for example, make daily deposits for several thousand dollars, but less than $10,000. These are some of the people being swept up in the IRS’ aggressive use of civil forfeitures.

According to a study last year by the Institute for Justice, the IRS initiated 500 percent more seizures for structuring in 2012 than it did in 2005, and 80 percent of those seizures were civil instead of criminal. At least a third of those seizures arose out of nothing more than a few banking transactions of less than $10,000 with no criminal activity even being alleged by the government. And the gap between what the IRS has seized and what was eventually forfeited after the process was complete is growing. Less than half the money seized in 2012 was actually finally forfeited.

All of these facts point to an increasing attitude of the IRS to seize first and ask questions later. This puts an intolerable burden on citizens who have not done anything wrong.

The solution is simple: end civil forfeitures. If someone has engaged in a crime, then the government should charge them and they should be afforded all the due process protections required by our conscience and the Constitution. We should not permit our government to seize the property of citizens on the mere suspicion of criminal activity by a bunch of unelected bureaucrats.

Diversity a must in state government

by Owen | 0644, 24 May 1616 | Politics - Wisconsin | 17 Comments

My column for the West Bend Daily News is online. Here you go:

In about 1832, former Federal Judge James Doty and two partners purchased more than 1,000 acres of land on the isthmus between Lakes Mendota and Monona for $2,400. He intended to build a city in the Four Lakes region centrally located to the strategically important ports of Prairie du Chen and Green Bay and the lucrative lead-mining area.

When Wisconsin became a territory in 1836, one of the first tasks for Gov. Henry Dodge and the territorial convention as they met in a cold wood building in Belmont was to choose a site for the capital of the territory. Doty quickly jumped into action.

Doty arrived in Belmont with the plans for a new city built on the isthmus. It would be named after President James Madison, the Father of the Constitution who died earlier that year. The streets would be laid out emanating from the central square with the principal streets being named for other signers of the U.S. Constitution. And the grand capital of the new territory, which everyone assumed would eventually become a state, would rest on the highest point of the isthmus with a grand view of the beautiful lakes.

Of course, there were differences of opinion and other people who wanted the capital located elsewhere. But after a month of wrangling as autumn gave way to winter in 1836, Doty was not to be denied. He brought warm buffalo coats for the delegates and gave them generous plots near the center of the city. Eventually, Doty won the delegates over and Madison became the capital. Doty and his investors eventually brought in $35,510 for their investment of $2,400 — more than 1,400 percent profit — through the sale of land to the new government and people who wanted to be near it.

Madison is the capital of Wisconsin because someone stood to profit from that decision and nothing has changed since. It remains our capital because people profit from it being so.

State Treasurer Matt Adamczyk highlighted a small example in a memo to the joint Finance Committee last week. Adamczyk showed that the Department of Children and Families and the Government Accountability Board lease three floors of a building a block from the capitol for prices ranging between $17.86 and $22.94 per square foot. Neither agency needs to be near the capitol and, in fact, it imposes an inconvenience on citizens visiting those agencies as parking is scarce and expensive. By simply moving the agencies to the east side of Madison, they could halve the taxpayers’ lease expenses. There are ample locations for as little as $10 per square foot and they include free parking.

Why are these two agencies spending twice as much as necessary for a building near the capitol? Somebody is making money off that decision and the taxpayers are paying for it.

While Adamczyk brings to light a very salient example of waste and a way to reduce it, we should go one step further. Why must those agencies be in Madison at all? Instead of moving them to the east side of Madison, why not move them to the east side of Appleton? Wausau? Racine?

In 1836, when our capital was selected, it made sense for all government functions to reside in the same city. Roads were poor and it took days or weeks to traverse the state by horseback, wagon, or on foot. In order for one unit of government to coordinate with another, they had to physically meet in the same room or engage in a lengthy and time-consuming exchange of letters.

It isn’t 1836 anymore. In the 21st century, we are conducting business across the globe without leaving our desks. There is simply no longer a rational basis for all of our government to reside in the same city and there are several great benefits to diversifying the agencies.

The obvious benefit is cost. Real estate and housing for employees are less expensive in other areas of the state. For example, plenty of great office space is available in West Bend for less than $14 per square foot. Multiply a savings of 10-50 percent for hundreds of state government leases and the savings add up quickly for the taxpayers.

Beyond the actual monetary savings is the benefit to the areas of the state outside of Madison. Roughly $30 billion tax dollars flow through Madison every year. That money flows out in the form of salaries for employees, construction, rent and countless other expenses. Madison has rightly benefited from such a large, stable industry in its borders. Imagine the benefit to a community like Manitowoc, for example, if the Department of Revenue located there with its hundreds of good, middle-class jobs. By locating various agencies in communities around Wisconsin, those communities could receive some tangible benefit from their tax dollars.

Finally, perhaps the greatest benefit from decentralizing our state government would be cultural. Gov. Lee Dreyfus was accurate when he described Madison as “77 square miles surrounded by reality.” That reality is Wisconsin.

Madison has a separate and distinct culture that has grown out of decades of stable, well-compensated government workers at the state government and University of Wisconsin-Madison. The vast majority of our state government agencies are staffed by Madisonians who share their common culture. By diversifying the geography of state government, we would also diversify the culture of state government. Instead of being dominated by Madisonians, our state government would also be staffed by folks from Milwaukee, Waupun, Green Bay, Waukesha, Hudson and many other regions of the state. This diversification of culture will help our state government be more understanding and responsive to everyone in the state. If we truly value diversity, we should welcome it into our state government.

Since Madison was founded, we have invented automobiles, airplanes, telephones, computers, the Internet, video conferencing, webcasts and countless other advances that render the centralization of our state government both unnecessary and counterproductive to the advancement of the state. It is time for the state government to venture out of Madison.

No Confidence

by Owen | 0659, 17 May 1616 | Education, Politics - Wisconsin | 10 Comments

My column for the West Bend Daily News is online. Here you go:

The University of Wisconsin System is an integral part of the success of our state. It is not only a primary source of higher education for Wisconsin’s youth, but it is also an economic engine that impacts almost every area of the state. For these reasons, and many others, passions run high whenever changes happen within the system.

That passion is running high right now with the universities’ faculties, as many have passed, or are considering, resolutions expressing their lack of confidence in the leadership of the university system. It started with the faculty of UW-Madison. Then UW-Green Bay and UW-La Crosse followed suit. UW-Eau Claire and other universities are considering doing the same.

While these resolutions do not carry any legal or formal weight, they are an expression of the faculties of those universities. What sparked these resolutions was a change in state law regarding tenure for faculty and the fallout from that change, but the spark set flame to some tinder that has been drying for some time.

Up until a few months ago, Wisconsin was the only state in the union to enshrine tenure protection for UW faculty in the state’s statutes. The Legislature wrote those protections out of the statutes and tasked the UW System leadership with creating tenure protections as a matter of university policy. UW System President Ray Cross and the UW Board of Regents have done just that, but the faculties are not satisfied with the resulting policy. In creating the tenure policy, the UW faculty demanded that tenure protect faculty at all costs — even if their department was eliminated. The Board of Regents’ policy allows for universities to terminate tenured faculty if the university leadership decides to eliminate the position due to educational considerations, comparative costeffectiveness, budgetary concerns and other factors. The faculty wants the university to only consider educational considerations.

Essentially, the faculty wants guaranteed jobs for life, paid for by taxpayers and students, even if there is no longer any justification for their jobs, and even if that means sacrificing other budget priorities like new programs, facilities and safety. The faculty wants tenure to completely insulate them from anything else happening in the world. The Board of Regents wants tenure to protect academic freedom, but allow for universities to take a more holistic approach to staffing decisions.

But the underlying issue is much deeper than just the battle over tenure. At the core is friction over the role of the UW System and the growing frustration that UW has drifted too far from its responsibilities to the citizens of Wisconsin. For decades, the cost of attending UW System universities has risen far more quickly than inflation or the wages of Wisconsinites. At the same time, students and their families, myself included, witness incredible waste on campus in the form of extravagant facilities, required courses of dubious value and courses taught by teaching assistants while professors are unavailable.

While UW faculty are expressing their lack of confidence in their leadership, many citizens of the state they are supposed to serve have lost confidence in the UW System as a whole. Meanwhile, many UW faculty members want impregnable job protections while being paid by taxes and tuition from students and families who enjoy no such protections. If those students lose their jobs, they still have to pay their taxes. They still have to pay off their student loans.

The strength and success of the UW System is incredibly important to Wisconsin, but the definition of success is subject to debate. There is a balance that must be struck in striving for multiple objectives within the reasonable capacity of Wisconsinites to pay.

The RPW Need Not be Trumped

by Owen | 0806, 10 May 1616 | Politics | 1 Comment

My column for the West Bend Daily News is online. Here you go:

It has been a week since Donald Trump won the Indiana primary and, with Ted Cruz and John Kasich dropping out, became the presumptive nominee of the Republican Party for president of the United States of America. In a primary field full of weighty Republicans, the most lightweight candidate floated to the top.

With a presumptive nominee, now is the time for Republicans to coalesce around the candidate to defeat Hillary Clinton, or so the narrative goes. Certainly, Trump has tapped into a rage that many Americans are feeling toward a government that has become increasingly intrusive while failing to address the real problems within our nation. That rage is justified and Republicans need to respond to it.

But as someone who has voted for the Republican presidential candidate for his entire adult life, I refuse to cast a vote for Trump. In choosing Trump as their candidate, the Republican Party has left me behind. Since I will also not vote for Clinton, I am looking hard at third party candidates.

My reasons for not voting for Trump are fairly simple. I am a lifelong conservative who votes for candidates who will advance conservative solutions for our nation’s problems. That is not to say that I must agree with everything a candidate believes in order to support him or her. I did not agree completely with Mitt Romney, John McCain, or George W. Bush, but I agreed with them on most of the big issues.

Trump is not a conservative — he is not even close. Based on his seven decades of history on earth and not on whatever platitudes he has been mouthing for the past few months, Trump is a New York liberal Democrat. He is prochoice, anti-second Amendment, pro-big government, prosocialized healthcare and on and on. He has not offered a single policy prescription that does not include an expansion of government power.

Trump combines his liberalism with a revolting character and personality. He is a serial and unapologetic adulterer. Trump is a braggart in victory and petty in defeat. Trump’s bigoted and elitist rhetoric is a big reason why his unfavorable ratings are more than 50 percent with women, minorities, millennials and conservatives. He is a man unencumbered by social or ethical mores and is proud of it.

There are some Republicans who argue that we must support Trump to make sure Clinton is denied the opportunity to appoint liberal justices to the Supreme Court. That argument rests on two tenuous pillars. First, it assumes that Trump will win, which is highly unlikely given his polling and the electoral map. Second, it assumes he would appoint more conservative justices when there is no evidence to suggest he will do so. Trump is a liberal and assurances to the contrary from a habitual liar do not bring comfort.

More simply, I will need to be able to go to sleep Nov. 8 with a clean conscience and wake up Nov. 9 and look my children in the eyes. I would not be able to do that should I exercise my franchise to commit my great nation to the governance of Trump.

While the presidential election is lost for conservatives, Wisconsin is not, and it is important to hold it. For the past six years, Wisconsin has been the center of a renaissance for conservatism. This renaissance is at grave risk. During the primary election, 65 percent of Wisconsin Republicans voted against Trump and now he will be at the top of the ballot. The task for the Republican Party of Wisconsin is to acknowledge and respect the anger of Trump’s supporters while affirming that Trumpism is not conservatism for the rest of Wisconsinites.

To do this, the RPW and leading Republicans should commit all state resources to supporting Wisconsin Republicans and not spend a dollar on supporting Trump. In a state that already leans Democratic and has voted for the Democratic presidential candidate since 1984, Trump’s incredibly divisive campaign means that he stands virtually no chance of winning the state. The RPW should not waste state resources on a losing effort and should, instead, focus all of their time and money on making sure Republicans hold the state Senate, Assembly and incumbent Congressional seats. In particular, the open 8th Congressional seat and Sen. Ron Johnson are in serious danger of turning Democratic in this election.

The RPW has had success recently because of smart, conservative leadership and an educated, motivated base that votes in exceptional numbers. If the RPW goes the way of Trump, it will be abandoning the former and betraying the latter. An electoral rout would be the inevitable, and justifiable, result.

Conservatives are walking back into the wilderness at the national level, but there is no need for that to happen in Wisconsin. We still have a lot of work to do.

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Boots & Sabers

Walker’s welfare reform works

Walker makes first offer on transportation budget

Referenda belie need to increase state spending

“Extremely Careless”

Diversity of thought unwelcome at most universities

Thousands of Wisconsin kids are going into the wrong grade

Candidates’ tax plans reveal their priorities

Obama’s ransom to Iran

Wisconsin must make the hard decisions

Obama creates path for a nuclear Iran

GAB’s successors off to shaky start

National Insecurity

“The tree of liberty must be refreshed…”

Brexit means a return to British rule

The tragedy in Orlando

Kids are having fewer kids

Not very civil forfeitures

Diversity a must in state government

No Confidence

The RPW Need Not be Trumped

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