Column | Boots & Sabers

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There is HOPE

by Owen | 0554, 22 Dec 1515 | Culture, Politics - Wisconsin | 3 Comments

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

It was May 1 and I was driving to a meeting in the Third Ward of Milwaukee. The weather was dreary but the day promised to be a good one. Then everything changed. My phone rang. A voice on the other end told me it was time to go to Texas. My only brother was dead.

Donald was four years my senior. He was a vibrant spirit who pushed both external and internal boundaries. He loved to read, ride his motorcycle, kayak, play with his dogs, eat, drink and love. He also loved to get high, and it killed him. He was a long-time user of drugs from marijuana, to cocaine, to heroin.

On that routine Wednesday morning in 2002, Donald decided to be the dutiful son he so often was and fix a leaky toilet in our mother’s home. Before getting to work, he decided he needed a pick-me-up and injected some cocaine into his vein. Several hours later, our mother found him lying next to that leaky toilet. His heart had exploded. He died violently and alone. He would have been 45 years old last week.

It did not have to end for him that way. Like me, Donald was the product of an intact middle class family. He benefited from a good education and solid foundation. Donald was smart, witty, kind and ambitious. When he started using drugs as a teen, he had access to treatment. He cleaned himself up for years at a time, graduated college, and held down great jobs. But when he was using, he descended into another realm where he stole, cheated and hurt those around him in the search for that next high. Drug addiction does not discriminate.

Sadly, my family’s experience with drug addiction is not unique. Drug overdoses have become epidemic and is the single largest cause of accidental death in America, with heroin and prescription opioids like oxycodone, hydrocodone and methadone leading the way.

The national statistics are staggering. In 2014, 47,055 people died from drug overdoses. That’s 150 percent greater than the number of people killed in automobile accidents and 1,800 percent greater than the number killed in firearm accidents. Opioids account for 61 percent of all drug overdose deaths. Since the turn of the millennium, deaths from opioid overdoses have doubled. Almost 500,000 people have died in America from opioid drug overdoses since 2000.

The statistics in Wisconsin are just as dismal. For 2013 (the most recent year of statistics available from the Wisconsin Department of Health Services), “More Wisconsin residents died as a result of drug overdose than from motor vehicle crashes, suicide, breast cancer, colon cancer, firearms, influenza or HIV…” with heroin and opioids contributing to 72 percent of all deaths from drug overdoses.

One path to addiction has become all too familiar. Someone is prescribed an opioid painkiller for a legitimate purpose (although doctors appear to be over-prescribing these powerful drugs when other painkillers would be more appropriate). That person, or someone else in the home who has stolen the medication, becomes addicted. Often, the prescription painkillers become too expensive or difficult to get, so the person turns to heroin, which is cheaper and easier to obtain than the prescription drugs. Mexican drug cartels have responded to the prescription drug-fueled demand for heroin by flooding the streets with the deadly drug.

Led by Rep. John Nygren, R–Marinette, whose family has also struggled with heroin addiction, Wisconsin has been one of the states pushing back on this epidemic by passing a series of laws collective called the Heroin, Opiate Prevention and Education (HOPE) Agenda. Earlier this month, Gov. Scott Walker signed the latest of these laws that makes Narcan and other opioid antagonists available to purchase from certain pharmacies without a prescription.

My family, like many others, will celebrate the birth of Christ this year without someone we love because they killed themselves with heroin or a similar drug. It does not have to happen for any other families. There is HOPE, but there is also a responsibility for each of us to watch for the signs and intervene early. Watch for the tiny pupils, sleepiness, flushed skin, runny nose, itchy skin, lack of eating, lying, stealing and dramatic changes of behavior. Do not be afraid to ask some tough questions of your kids and dig into the parts of their lives they do not want you to see. An uncomfortable conversation is infinitely preferable to the death of a loved one. Do not allow your loved one to become an object lesson for a newspaper column.

Time to get serious

by Owen | 0649, 15 Dec 1515 | Economy, Politics | 0 Comments

My column for the West Bend Daily News is online. It was one of those that I started out writing with one intent and it turned into something completely different. That happens sometimes. Here it is:

We are a little less than seven weeks away from when the first votes will be cast to choose President Barack Obama’s successor. While the presidential election season has been entertaining so far, it is time for Americans to begin to seriously assess the candidates and the country we will elect one of them to lead. Our nation has some grim challenges ahead that will need to be addressed with honesty, intelligence and resoluteness.

It has fallen out of favor to discuss in polite circles, but America has a debt problem. Much like many American citizens have too much credit card or student loan debt, the nation has a debt problem that cannot be ignored.

About this time three years ago, America’s national debt exceeded the gross domestic product of the nation, and has continued to rise. That means that if every good and service that the entire American economy produced in a single year was to be put toward retiring our nation’s debt, we would still not pay it all off. America has not had this much debt since the entirety of our nation’s resources were marshaled to fight World War II.

What is driving the debt is very simple: Our federal government is spending far more money than it takes in. Where does the money go? The majority of federal spending goes to healthcare, Social Security and other entitlements (only about 20 percent goes to our active military and veterans). Under Obama, our nation took on more debt than every other president combined. Essentially, our nation is borrowing money that our children and grandchildren will have to pay back to pay the retirement and healthcare costs of people living today. It is a generational transfer of wealth.

Unfortunately, the official national debt, which is money our nation has borrowed to pay our bills, is not the entirety of what our nation owes. The almost $19 trillion dollar national debt does not include future monies that our nation has promised to pay. If you add in those obligations, American taxpayers are on the hook for more than $127 trillion, according to Forbes. Some estimates put that number even higher. As it stands now, there is no way to keep those promises. There simply is not enough money.

There are only two ways for a nation to pay off debt. The first way is to spend less than it collects in taxes. If the government takes in more taxes than it spends, it can gradually pay off the debt over time. This has only happened briefly in most of our lifetimes, from 1998 through 2001. Other than those few periods, neither Republicans nor Democrats have shown an ability to control spending since President Dwight Eisenhower. And while the federal government could raise taxes (again), it still could not raise them enough to match the current spending without sending the national economy into a depression. The mantra to just “tax the rich” is a child’s answer to an adult problem.

The second way a nation can pay off its debt is to print money. Unlike individual families or states, a nation controls the currency and can print its own money. But every action has a reaction. As the treasury floods the economy with new money to pay off old debts, it devalues the currency and makes everything more expensive for average Americans whose wages rarely keep up in an era of high inflation. Also, the people taking on America’s debt are less willing to take on debt that will be paid back with devalued currency, so they either insist on an everincreasing interest rate or refuse to take on the debt at all.

The federal debt is just one challenge that the next president will face. He or she will also have to confront the onslaught of violent radical Islamists currently being championed by the Islamic State; a sluggish national economy that has been treading water for years; the rise of China and Russia; a nuclear Iran; the problems created by our current open borders; and many other problems that affect the way Americans’ live their lives.

The cage match of the presidential election has been fun to watch so far, but the time for silliness and silly candidates is over. Now it is time to think seriously about choosing the leader of the free world.

West Bend’s bridge to nowhere

by Owen | 0704, 8 Dec 1515 | Politics - Wisconsin | 0 Comments

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

After years of debate and rejected proposals, the city of West Bend approved a plan to build a new pedestrian bridge across the Milwaukee River between downtown and the Museum of Wisconsin Art. The plan includes demolishing an existing pedestrian bridge and the defunct “bridge to nowhere.” But at the last minute, a group has launched an effort to save the bridge to nowhere. Is it a bridge worth saving?

The history of the bridge to nowhere is a history of the evolution of West Bend’s downtown retail shopping. The enclosed, climate-controlled bridge was built in 1982 to connect West Bend’s historic downtown to the thriving, 50,000-square-foot West Bend Outlet Mall located just across the Milwaukee River. At the time, the outlet mall concept was novel and was an attraction for shoppers from far and wide.

As other outlet malls were built in places like Kenosha and Oshkosh, the demand for the West Bend Outlet Mall dried up and it was sold in 1994 to Fields Fine Furniture. That store eventually failed, leaving an abandoned husk that was eventually bought by the city and, eventually, torn down in 2007. The bridge to somewhere became the bridge to nowhere.

Since those dismal days for downtown, new life has been breathed into it, as it has become a destination for more eclectic shoppers and the arts. Part of that rebirth has been the construction of the new building for MOWA across the river. As part of the developer’s agreement for the museum, the city agreed to construct a new pedestrian bridge to connect the museum to the vibrant center of the city.

So after a lot of thought and debate, the city approved the plan to tear down the two existing bridges and build a new bridge. The bridge will connect the two parks and Main Street to MOWA to allow visitors to easily enjoy the entire area.

At the same time, another historic piece of downtown is anticipating new life. The downtown theater has been closed and in disrepair for years. In its last gasps, I took my kids to a showing of Pixar’s “Cars” in 2006 and loved the atmosphere of the classic theater experience, but there just was not enough demand to keep the doors open. A group of people is looking at the theater with a plan to revive it as part of a larger entertainment destination in the heart of downtown.

The problem with their plans is that they view the bridge to nowhere as a critical element to connect their project with the needed parking available across the river. To that end, they have launched a petition drive and are pressuring city leaders to save the bridge to nowhere so it can once again become a bridge to somewhere.

The problems with saving the bridge are the conjoined twins of time and money. The bridge project is well underway, with the bridge to nowhere scheduled to begin coming down Jan. 15. According to Mayor Kraig Sadownikow, the West Bend Common Council will need to put it on the agenda for the Jan. 4 meeting by Dec. 21 in order to avert the demolition. If the city does decide to save the bridge, they would have to waive about $45,000 in grants for the project from the state of Wisconsin.

While West Bend would surely enjoy and benefit from a revitalized downtown theater, the city should move ahead with demolishing the bridge to nowhere unless the theater developers can offer something more substantive than an idea.

To date, the people who want to refurbish the theater have only offered a vision. There are no detailed building or funding plans for a project. It is just an idea at this point. On the basis of this idea, they are asking the taxpayers of West Bend to waive off tens of thousands of dollars in state funding and be on the hook for tearing down the bridge should their plans never come to fruition. That is a lot of risk for the taxpayers to take on a whim and a promise.

If the developers of the theater want the bridge to nowhere to remain, the city should only agree on two conditions. First, the developers must reimburse the money from the state that would have to be foregone if the bridge is not demolished. Second, the developers must put enough money in escrow to tear down the bridge if they do not use it by a date certain. If their plans do not pan out, the taxpayers should not be stuck with a derelict bridge for another decade.

It is great for West Bend to see so much energy and money flowing into creating and maintaining a vibrant downtown area rife with shopping, restaurants, arts, music and entertainment. But it may be too little too late for saving the bridge to nowhere.

Americans increasingly support government speech police

by Owen | 0608, 1 Dec 1515 | Culture, Politics | 24 Comments

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

Eighty-six years ago, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. wrote, “If there is any principle of the Constitution that more imperatively calls for attachment than any other it is the principle of free thought — not free thought for those who agree with us but freedom for the thought that we hate.” Distressingly, almost three in 10 Americans now support government suppression of hateful thoughts and that number is growing.

The Pew Research Center recently conducted a wide-ranging global survey about support for some fundamental democratic principles including freedom of expression, freedom of religion and freedom of the press. While the survey generally found Americans more supportive of these principles than people in most other countries, that support is still lower than it should be and declining with each successive generation.

When asked if the government should prevent people from saying things that are offensive to minority groups, 28 percent of Americans said yes. When broken down into generations, the numbers are alarming. Only 12 percent of the Silent generation (70-87) said yes while a full 40 percent of the Millennial generation (18-34) support government suppression of offensive statements. Also, people are more likely to support such government censorship if they are a Democrat, a woman, nonwhite and do not have a college degree.

As far back as 1791, when the Bill of Rights was ratified, Americans understood that freedom of speech is an absolute necessity to preserve our liberties. That is why it is written in the First Amendment in unambiguous language, “Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech.” There is not any wiggle room in that prohibition on government regulation of free speech.

Since that amendment was ratified, our nation has seen fit through our judicial process to put very limited restrictions on free speech when it comes to things like national security and speech that leads to imminent damage, like the proverbial “shouting ‘fire’ in a crowded movie theater,” but outside of those narrow restrictions, Americans’ freedom of speech has generally been held inviolable.

But now there appears to be growing support for our government to actually prohibit speech that is offensive. The problem with this, if we decide to allow our government to use the power of the coercive police state to regulate offensive speech, is we must first define what is offensive. The trend in places like college campuses has been to allow the offended to define what is offensive. That standard gives any single crank who decides that he or she is offended by something a veto power on speech. It also turns our legal system upside down by putting the burden of proof on the accused offender to prove that what they said was not offensive. Such a standard is unworkable in a free society, but works just fine in a tyranny.

Furthermore, in our current age of microagressions and students protesting about people violating their “safe zones,” the standard of what is offensive or not is a briskly moving target. Today’s perfectly acceptable language could be tomorrow’s racial slur. For an example, just look at how quickly the accurate phrase “illegal alien” has become a derogatory term that some presidential candidates are striking from their vocabulary.

Empowering our government to regulate our speech — even our offensive speech — is not the path to tyranny. It is tyranny. We must not allow our distaste for offensive speech to be a license for oppression.

Instead of looking to our government to protect us from offensive speech, we should do what free peoples have always done: combat speech with more speech. While people should be free to say offensive things, it does not mean their speech should go unchallenged. The timeless tools of argument, ridicule, shaming and ostracism have regulated hateful idiots to the fringes of American society for generations and they can continue to be relied upon.

Overeducated and underemployed

by Owen | 0606, 24 Nov 1515 | Culture | 11 Comments

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

There is a growing chasm between the skills that people need to succeed in modern American society and the skills we are emphasizing in our system of education and our culture. It is a chasm that bodes ill for the future of our country and for our children.

A quick scan of the open job postings on any given day reveals some companies searching desperately for workers, but many of those job postings have been open for a long time. The hardest jobs to fill continue to be engineers, technical workers and virtually every skilled trade. While unemployment is low, underemployment is still high, and yet these goodpaying jobs continue to go unfilled. Why?

The primary reason is that we, as a culture, have devalued those jobs. We have benefited from the hard work of our forbearers and enjoy the most leisurely and advanced society in the history of the world. For the vast majority of Americans, our necessities are relatively easy to provide. This allows us time to focus our attention on our leisure activities and indulge our creative impulses.

This is not a bad thing and is certainly nothing for which Americans should apologize. We should be proud that our civilization has advanced so far that we are debating the relative merits of the iPhone versus the Samsung Galaxy instead of whether we should boil the water another 10 minutes before drinking it.

But through that advancement, we have devalued many of the jobs that make our advanced society possible, and in doing so we have closed the doors of many great opportunities for our children. We see this cultural trend manifest itself in colleges.

Simply put, far too many kids are spending money they don’t have to get degrees they don’t need for jobs that don’t exist. A recent survey by the University of Wisconsin-Madison College of Letters and Sciences showed that more than a third of their graduates were working in jobs that did not require their degree, and 10 percent of them said their degrees were “irrelevant” to their jobs. Almost half of those surveyed regretted getting their degrees.

The problem is that there are very few jobs for people with degrees in Scandinavian studies, Latin, gender and women’s studies, comparative literature, etc. There is absolutely nothing wrong with studying those subjects, but most graduates from those programs will only find employment teaching others the same topic in an educational pyramid scheme. Such intellectual aerobics are useful, but have historically been the indulgences of rich folks who do not need to worry about gainful employment after graduation.

Meanwhile, while our universities are churning out highly educated people whose degrees have little value in the job market, there are great jobs being left unfilled. Culturally, parents want to brag to their friends on Facebook about how little Jimmy got accepted to Marquette far more than they want to say little Sally just started an apprenticeship to become a plumber. Yet the odds are that Sally will more likely be employed, better paid and debt-free in 10 years compared to Jimmy.

Additionally, as the education committee from the West Bend Chamber of Commerce recently revealed, the skills that are most valuable to employers have little to do with formal education. Punctuality, respect, manners, clean attire, work ethic and other soft skills were more important to employers than knowing specific subject matter. Employers can teach specific skills. They cannot teach people to show up on time and work hard.

Our society can use a few experts in medieval tapestries, but it needs far more skilled people who work hard at things we need. And some of our kids are better served learning to be a great crane operator than getting a master’s degree in comparative literature and folklore studies.

The Islamic State rends the fabric of Western civilization

by Owen | 0616, 17 Nov 1515 | Culture, Foreign Affairs, Politics | 46 Comments

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

It had been a long time since a foreign power darkened the City of Light, but the Islamic State did just that last week. Hours after President Barack Obama declared that “we have contained them,” the Islamic State killed at least 129 people and injured hundreds more in synchronous suicide attacks on several locations in Paris.

The Paris attack is, sadly, another in a string of attacks perpetrated by the Islamic State as they have continued their aggressive growth. From a small band of terrorists forged in the power vacuum of Iraq in 2011, the Islamic State has grown into a powerful, depraved quasi-nation with separatist outposts on three continents.

Since June, the Islamic State has killed 38 tourists on a beach in Tunisia; 102 people in Ankara, Turkey; 224 people on a Russian airplane leaving Egypt; 18 people at a funeral in Baghdad; 44 people in south Beirut; and many other smaller attacks. They have been flexing their terrorist muscles on foreign soil in an effort to strike terror into their enemies, recruit more fanatics to their cause and fulfill what they believe to be their sacred duty to kill anyone who does not share their Islamic faith.

The attacks in Paris were not an aberration. They were the furtherance of a strategy. There will be more. Many more.

How should America respond to the certainty that America will soon see attacks like those that have been spreading to other nations?

On the defensive side of the coin, there is a lot that we can do. The Islamic State has shown an affinity to strike at soft targets — places where there are large groups of unarmed people. Take the Paris attacks as an example. The attacks were coordinated to happen at the same time, but they were not particularly sophisticated. They did not require a tremendous amount of preparation, money or time to carry out. It took less than 10 fanatics who were willing to die for their cause to assemble some crude, inexpensive weaponry, and fan out into the city at the same time. A couple of the thugs failed to penetrate a stadium and were limited to only killing a couple of people. Some of them just massacred theatergoers without any plan other than to kill until they were killed. What should worry us is the ease of which a handful of slapdash terrorists can kill so many.

These kinds of attacks could easily happen in America. One way to make them more difficult and mitigate the damage when they occur is to harden our targets. Americans have long been a proud, independent, free people who took responsibility for safeguarding their liberties against all threats. Any American who is able should consider it their duty to arm themselves and be prepared to defend themselves and others. When a terrorist reaches his hand out in America, he should feel the thorns instead of the rose.

Our public policy should align with supporting a free people vigorously protecting their liberties. Instead of politicians carving out more soft targets with gun-free zones and onerous restrictions on law-abiding citizens, they should remind Americans that each of us take responsibility for the liberties that we all share. Unfortunately, the Obama Administration is advocating policies that would disarm more Americans in a naive and disingenuous promise that the government can protect us all the time. It is worth remembering that Paris has some of the strictest gun restrictions in the world.

On offense, the choices are far less clear. The Islamic State is run by people who consider it their religious duty to kill us. In fact, they consider killing us to be a path to paradise. Such people cannot be swayed with diplomacy or soothed by concessions. The only way to stop them is to imprison them or kill them — and there are not enough jails to imprison all of them.

But America should not be the only nation to expend blood and treasure to eliminate a threat to all of Western civilization. While the Islamic State can reach America, its proximity to other nations makes their cooperation both necessary and possible. America should lead in building a broad coalition of international forces to invade the Islamic State’s strongholds with overwhelming force. They cannot be defeated with drones and squads. They can be defeated with tanks and divisions.

Unfortunately, building such a coalition is unlikely with President Barack Obama in office. Under his direction, America has retreated from world leadership and ceded too much power to other nations. From his early abandonment of the Iranian rebels, to the evaporation of his “red line” for Syria, to his estrangement from Israel, to his silence on Ukraine, to his cold shoulder to Poland, foreign leaders do not trust Obama enough to enter into such a precarious enterprise with him. Much like Obama is incapable of building coalitions among his own countrymen in Congress, he lacks the skills and temperament to build and lead an international coalition against the Islamic State. Americans will just have to hunker down and wait for the next president to take on the difficult task of eliminating the Islamic State.

WPCP sees massive expansion

by Owen | 0635, 3 Nov 1515 | Politics - Wisconsin | 0 Comments

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

The school enrollment numbers are in for September and the statewide school choice program is continuing to see strong demand all over the state wherever it is available to parents and kids. It is a remarkable story of success for a program that is so short-lived.

The Wisconsin Parental Choice Program was started for the 2013-14 school year as a small pilot program. The WPCP is one of the three school choice programs in Wisconsin. The other two school choice programs are for Milwaukee and Racine, but the WPCP applies to all citizens outside of those two cities.

Only 511 kids participated in the WPCP in the first year. Enrollment almost doubled in the 2014-15 school year, to 1,008 kids. And this year, thanks to a gradual lifting of restrictions by the Legislature, enrollment in the WPCP has more than doubled again to 2,513 kids. Similarly, the number of schools participating has increased to a total of 82 schools statewide, including the first high school in Washington County, Kettle Moraine Lutheran High School. Granted, these numbers are a tiny fraction of the 994,536 students in K-12 in Wisconsin, but the trajectory of growth is positive.

Predictably, anti-choice advocates and defenders of the status quo are decrying the fact that some of the funding for the WPCP is coming at the expense of the public schools. Their criticisms are rooted, unfortunately, in the interests of the public school infrastructure and not in that of the children those schools are meant to serve.

The Legislature instituted a way of funding the WPCP with the budget earlier this year. It is a simple funding formula that is designed to be flexible with growth and is rooted in the core principle of money meant to educate a child should follow the child. For every child who gets a voucher through the WPCP, the voucher is funded with state aid that would have otherwise gone to the public school for the purpose of educating the child. For example, if a child in West Bend attends a private school with a WPCP voucher, the amount of state aid the West Bend School District would have received for the child is redirected to the voucher instead of the school district.

Some claim that such a redirection of funds from the school districts constitutes a “cost.” They claim the public school districts are paying for the voucher program, and even using this argument as a justification to raise local property taxes to “offset” the “cost.”

Their arguments are a sham. While the school district does not receive the state aid for the child receiving a voucher, the school district is also not responsible to educate the child. The school district incurs no cost to educate the child, so why should they receive any state aid for that purpose? One can argue whether or not the state taxpayers should pay for lower income kids to attend private schools, but there is no valid argument for state taxpayers to pay public school districts to educate students who do not attend their schools.

It is also worth noting that the state’s open enrollment system, in which students in one district can attend a different district, is funded through a similar mechanism. Open enrollment has been the law in Wisconsin for decades, and yet public school advocates have not complained about it. They only get exercised about the shifting of state aid when that money goes to a private school instead of another public school.

There is a cost to expanding the WPCP, but it is a cost to state taxpayers — not local school districts. To date, roughly 76 percent of kids participating in the WPCP were already attending a private school. Before the WPCP, these families were footing the entire bill, not state taxpayers. With a WPCP voucher, the state taxpayers are now paying for an education that was previously being paid for by only the parents. Even though this is a small additional cost to taxpayers (currently less than 0.01 percent of total spending on K-12 education), the increasing competition in education delivery and varied education opportunities will more than offset the cost while providing better outcomes for Wisconsin’s children.

From health care to groceries to internet providers to banks, having choices has always benefited individuals and society as a whole. Having choices in our education providers will have the same positive impact. We are in the beginning stages of seeing something great for Wisconsin and our children with the budding WPCP.

That’s My Job

by Owen | 0652, 27 Oct 1515 | Politics | 3 Comments

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

Fatherhood got a boost last week from the realm of politics as two powerful politicians decided to lead by example by being strong fathers. In an age when fathers are often absent and frequently dismissed by our culture, it was a positive development.

Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Janesville, will almost certainly be elected speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives this week, but it was not without conditions. Ryan did not want to be the speaker. He was quite happy, as he frequently reminded everyone who would listen, as the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee in the House. And why wouldn’t he be happy? Being the chairman of arguably the most powerful committee in the House and having his hands directly on the levers of government policies was the dream job for a congressman who has spent his career making his name as a policy nerd.

But the Republicans in the House were having difficulty deciding on a leader. The conservative advocates, who are on a mission to accomplish things and are frustrated with what they believe to have been weak and uninspired leadership from Speaker John Boehner, are pushing for a conservative crusader as the new speaker. But they represent a hardened minority of the caucus who can scuttle any candidate for speaker, but do not have the votes to win the day. The moderate and liberal Republicans want a more moderate Speaker who will compromise for the small victories instead of dying on the hills of greatness.

Into this chasm steps Ryan. He is a fiscal and social conservative with a reputation for pragmatism. He is also young and articulates the Republican message well in both friendly and hostile environments. He quickly became the one hope for both conservatives and moderates to bridge the factions and represent the party and lead the House.

But Ryan has some conditions. As is becoming more common with men who are in high demand in their professions, Ryan said he would only take the job if the responsibilities would be adapted to accommodate his responsibilities as a father. Perhaps because Ryan lost his own father at a young age, he is making his priorities clear: family first, job second.

On the other side of the political spectrum and at the end of a lengthy career, another politician is sending the same message — as he has throughout his career. Vice President Joe Biden has always been a good father and family man. As a senator, “Amtrak Joe” was known for regularly taking the train to and from home from Washington to be a father to his kids. While too many other politicians all but abandon their families as they spend all of their time in Washington furthering their careers, Biden spent hour after hour, year after year, decade after decade riding the train home to be with his family.

Up until last week, Biden was considering another run for president. His son, Beau, died last year of brain cancer and his Biden said that Beau wanted him to run. In a weak Democratic field and as the sitting vice president, Biden stood perhaps his best chance of winning the nomination of his lifetime. But in the end, Biden decided not to run. Among the reasons Biden gave for his decision was that he wanted to be home with his family — especially his grandkids, who will now grow up without their father.

Our culture too often disdains the importance of fathers. In our movies and television shows, fathers are far more often portrayed as stupid, abusive or lazy instead of loving, hardworking and clever. Fatherhood is dismissed as irrelevant or even harmful. But any kid who has grown up without their father never loses the longing for the cornerstone of their foundation that was never set.

Two men from different political persuasions in different phases of their careers reminded Americans that being a father is more important than any job — even jobs such as president or speaker. The Biden and Ryan kids are lucky to have the dads they have.

Gotta Wear Shades

by Owen | 0704, 20 Oct 1515 | Economy, Politics - Wisconsin | 0 Comments

Is it wrong to use lines from 80’s songs in my column? I think not. My column for the West Bend Daily News is online. Here it is:

During the budget debate earlier this year, the Democrats called for tax increases to fix Wisconsin’s $2.2 billion budget deficit. They were wailing about the impact of the deficit on things like education and health care. Sen. Jon Erbenbach went as far as to call it “Governor Walker’s $2.2 billion deficit crisis.”

Prominent news agencies like Bloomberg, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, the Wisconsin State Journal and others went on to report on Wisconsin’s huge budget deficit and advocate ways to repair it. The budget deficit meme was even picked up as recently as a few weeks ago by Republican opponents of Gov. Scott Walker to attack him during his aborted presidential run.

The problem with all of those news reports and political rhetoric is that was false then and it is false now. In March of this year, Bob Lang of the nonpartisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau sent a memo indicating that the projections at that time showed the state of Wisconsin would finish the budget year with a net positive balance of $58 million.

Now that the budget year is over and a final accounting has taken place, we know that the truth is even better. According to Wisconsin’s Department of Administration, the state finished the year with a surplus of $135.6 million. If you are reading about the great news of the strength of the state’s finances for the first time in this column, you are not alone. While the Democrats’ fictional $2.2 billion deficit garnered headlines for months, the real story scarcely warranted a blurb in most of the state’s media outlets.

The news of “why” the state has a surplus is also worth knowing. The state took in more revenue than projected and spent less than budgeted. The excess revenue to the state came primarily from corporate taxes and sales tax collections. This indicates a state economy that is performing slightly better than expected. State income tax collections were actually slightly down thanks to the Legislature’s reform of withholding schedules to allow Wisconsinites to keep more of their paychecks for longer.

On the spending side, the state spent $271 million less than allocated in the budget. And while the state spent $271 million less than expected, the state still spent 4.8 percent more in fiscal year 2015 than it did in fiscal year 2014. Yes, despite the lamentations of liberals whose thirst for tax dollars is never quenched, the state is still increasing spending faster than inflation and has a ghastly spending addiction.

That increase in spending included things like increasing the state’s rainy day fund to the largest-ever balance of $279.7 million, a 7.6 percent increase in aid to school districts and local governments, a 10 percent increase in aid payments to individuals and organizations, and an illadvised one-time $406 million property tax offset for Wisconsin’s technical colleges. The spending increases were partially offset by a 5.3 percent decrease in state operations spending.

After all of the beans were counted, the state taxed more and spent more than previous years, but still finished the year with a surplus.

Why did the state media and Walker’s opponents fixate on the fictional $2.2 billion deficit for so long? The $2.2 billion number was based on an estimate from the Department of Administration issued in November of 2014. The same department issued the projected surplus a few months later, which the media largely ignored. And why are we not seeing the same volume and intensity of news stories touting the actual budget surplus? I suppose good news isn’t as much fun.

The fact that the state’s finances are sound is great for the state’s citizens. When that fact is coupled with the fact that Wisconsin unemployment rate is at a 14-year low of 4.3 percent, Wisconsin’s future is really looking bright.

Water Power

by Owen | 0613, 13 Oct 1515 | Politics | 3 Comments

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

A federal court has stepped in to temporarily halt the implementation of yet another of President Barack Obama’s oppressive regulatory overreaches. This time, it involves a regulation that would assail the private property rights of virtually every American and have a devastating impact on businesses big and small.

Beginning in 1948, the federal Clean Water Act has given the federal government the responsibility of regulating the “waters of the United States.” The act has been tweaked and revised over time, but the jurisdiction of the federal government to regulate the waters of the U.S. has always extended to navigable waters like permanent rivers, lakes, and territorial seas.

The most recent court case arose out of a new rule from the Environmental Protection Agency and the Army Corps of Engineers to greatly broaden the definition of “waters of the U.S.” The rule was enacted in April of last year that redefined “waters of the U.S.” to include almost every damp spot in the nation. The rule gave the federal government jurisdiction over many other types of waters, including “tributaries,” “adjacent waters” and the catchall “other waters.” They explicitly included streams that only occur after a rain and waters that are not connected to jurisdictional water.

Why does this matter? If the regulations are allowed to go into effect, it would give the federal government power to directly regulate almost every property in the nation that occasionally gets wet. If water pools on your property during a rainstorm or there is a drainage ditch on your farm, the EPA would have the power to regulate your property. In practical terms, that means that any time a homeowner, business or farm wants to make any changes to their property, they would be required to get permission from the federal government and possibly have to pay for expensive environmental impact studies and environmental mitigation.

A federal judge in North Dakota had already stayed the rule, but the Obama administration decided to interpret the ruling as only applying to the 13 states in that federal district. This time, the Cincinnati-based Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals also stayed the rule and made it clear that the stay applied nationally.

The court issued the stay because it contends that the petitioners, representing 18 states, have a good chance of succeeding in their lawsuit against the rule. The court further said that, “What is of greater concern to us, in balancing the harms, is the burden — potentially visited nationwide on governmental bodies, state and federal, as well as private parties — and the impact on the public in general, implicated by the Rule’s effective redrawing of jurisdictional lines over certain of the nation’s waters.”

The case still needs to wind its way through the legal process, but for now the citizens of the U.S. will not be subjected to yet more regulatory control from Washington.

While the onslaught of regulation has been temporarily halted, one does have to worry about this continued push by the federal government into every aspect of our lives. In this case, two federal agencies have gone through a considerable effort to redefine an existing definition for the express purpose of expanding their authority into areas never envisioned by Congress. With no mandate from the citizens to do so, these agencies are expanding their power without a single vote being taken by any elected representatives of the people.

Some of the explanation for this aggressive offensive by federal agencies may lie in the inexorable momentum of all bureaucracies to expand their power, but there is more to it than that. Particularly when one considers that the EPA has police powers and spends roughly $75 million per year on special agents equipped with the latest in military weapons and technology, it is worrisome that they would take such an aggressive action to expand their authority into the backyards of virtually every property owner in the nation.

Ozone Baby

by Owen | 0657, 6 Oct 1515 | Politics - Wisconsin | 1 Comment

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

Years after the Great Recession ended, the American economy is still limping along. In response, the Obama administration is moving forward with harsh regulations that will take a baseball bat to the knees of Uncle Sam.

The latest monthly jobs report was released by the Labor Department and it was another dismal view into the American economy. The nation only created 142,000 jobs in September. That’s far short of the 203,000 new jobs that economists were expecting and even farther short of the 300,000-400,000 new monthly jobs that would indicate strong growth. The report also revised the reports from July and August down to 223,000 and 136,000 new jobs, respectively.

The other news in the report was not any better. A record 94.6 million Americans are no longer participating in the labor force at all. The labor participation rate is at its lowest point in almost 40 years. This is partly due to aging baby boomers retiring, but also because more people of working age are choosing to not work. This is a trend of America moving back to a 1950s-style workforce where one worker supported a spouse and kids, but more indicative of more people choosing the social safety net over gainful employment. This means that we now have 157 million Americans working and paying taxes to support the other 161 million.

On top of all that, wages for Americans remain flat. Average hourly earnings for all employees on private, nonfarm payrolls declined by a penny to $25.09. Wages are stagnant while the cost of healthcare, groceries and energy continues to rise.

In order to ensure that the American economy remains hobbled and perhaps nudge it back into recession, President Barack Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency has decided to foist a costly new regulation on American industry. The EPA has set another rule establishing strict air quality standards for ozone. They are reducing the National Ambient Air Quality Standards for ground-level ozone limits from 75 to 70 parts per billion.

While such a change sounds innocuous, it represents a massive regulation on American industry that likely cannot be met with today’s technology. The National Association of Manufacturers released a study showing that compliance costs with the new rule will exceed $1.1 trillion, making it the most expensive single regulation in history.

Those costs will fall disproportionately on American manufacturers and their customers. Manufacturers both large and small will be forced to spend thousands of dollars trying to comply with the regulations. By raising the cost of manufacturing in America at the same time that Americans’ stagnant wages cannot afford more expensive goods, the EPA’s ozone regulation will push more manufacturers overseas to countries that are more amenable to their success.

Wisconsin will be hit especially hard by the new ozone regulation. Wisconsin is still a manufacturing state. It has the highest number of per capita manufacturing jobs in the nation. Manufacturing is also the single largest employment sector in the state. Also, average wages for manufacturing jobs are well above the average for other kinds of jobs. There is no way to get around the fact that manufacturing is good for Wisconsin. The new regulation will disproportionately hammer Wisconsin’s economy.

Surely our founding fathers never envisioned a nation where a powerful federal agency in faraway Washington, D.C., would have the power to enact oppressive laws that will cost Americans hundreds of billions of dollars and force thousands of them out of work. The law is going into effect without a single vote being held by Americans’ elected representatives. It is the essence of despotic rule.

Obama seems content, if not intent, on leaving a burning husk of an American economy when he finally leaves the White House for the final time. The EPA is his blowtorch.

Reforming Wisconsin’s Civil Service Law

by Owen | 0620, 29 Sep 1515 | Politics - Wisconsin | 9 Comments

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

In Wisconsin, the fall legislative session that occurs in the first year of a governor’s term is unpredictable. The hard work of the biennial budget is complete and both parties are usually nursing some political wounds. The governor is three years away from another election and legislators are also a comfortable distance away from electoral accountability. In the past, this session was often a session in which bored legislators pushed forward pet projects that stand little chance of success but create little tempests.

Thankfully, it appears that the Republicans are not going to waste the fall session this year with trivial gestures. Instead, they are poised to continue pushing Wisconsin forward with serious, thoughtful and consequential reforms — from repealing Wisconsin’s antiquated protectionist minimum markup law to reeling in the rogue Government Accountability Board. One proposal that has the potential to greatly improve Wisconsin’s state government by modernizing its civil service law was announced by Sen. Roger Roth, R-Appleton, and Rep. Jim Steineke, R-Kaukauna.

Wisconsin’s civil service law was originally implemented in 1905 during the Progressive Era to create a professional workforce to run our government that was free of political manipulation. It was designed to end the practice of patronage, whereby elected officials would give out government jobs to their friends and supporters irrespective of their qualifications. Wisconsin’s civil service law was a landmark law that has benefited Wisconsin for generations.

Even great laws, however, need a little tweaking from time to time. Over the last century, the civil service law has become too cumbersome and somnolent in the modern labor economy. This is impeding the ability of the citizens of Wisconsin to attract and retain the best possible employees. Put simply, the civil service law has made it far too difficult to hire and fire the right people, and Wisconsin suffers for it.

The difficulty in firing bad or mediocre government employees has been a problem for a long time. Civil service protections have long since drifted toward aggressively protecting bad employees at the expense of the citizens’ right to get good service for their tax dollars. For years, the news has been full of stories about government employees who were caught doing outrageous things — like watching pornography on the job or running a personal business on state time — and are retained through an arbitrator’s perverse definition of “just cause.”

The statistics bear out the difficulty of firing government employees. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ most recent Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, private sector employees are almost three times more likely to be fired for cause than government employees. This is not because the private sector employees are three times more incompetent or corrupt than public sector employees. It is because private sector employers have more latitude to purge their staff of bad employees for the benefit of all.

Roth and Steineke’s bill would put in place a more sensible process for termination that does a better job of protecting the citizens’ interests while still protecting state employees from arbitrary termination. The bill would better define “just cause” instead of leaving the vast swaths of gray area for an arbitrator or judge to abuse. It would also put a deadline of six or seven months on the appeals process instead of letting it drag out for years as it does today. These are extremely sensible reforms that, frankly, are long overdue and do not go far enough in correcting this flaw in the system — but it is a great start.

The hiring process for government employees is also overly burdensome. This problem is about to get a lot worse. Our aging workforce is affecting the government sector just like the private sector, but the wide availability of early retirement in the government sector makes the problem much more acute. According to the bill’s authors, 8 percent of state employees are already eligible for retirement. In five years, that grows to 23 percent. In 10 years, it will be 40 percent. The accelerating outflow of state employees who are moving on to their well-earned retirement puts pressure on the state to hire a lot of replacement employees.

The problem is that the current state hiring process relies on a clunky civil service exam that often measures little about a prospective employee’s skills that are germane to the job for which they are applying. After an applicant completes the civil service test, the lengthy and bureaucratic process that follows can take months before a job offer is extended. Unfortunately for the citizens of Wisconsin, people who are really good at their jobs rarely stay on the job market for that long. The result is that the citizens must often settle on the more mediocre applicants who were passed over by other potential employers.

Roth and Steineke’s bill would switch the state’s hiring process to a modern, resume-based application system similar to that used in the vast majority of the private sector. This would allow state hiring managers to move more quickly to identify and hire the most qualified people available. The bill would also implement a 60-day hiring goal to help prevent the state from missing out on the best people on the market.

The immediate reactions to the proposed reforms from the defenders of the entrenched bureaucracy were as predictable as they were sad. The shrill shrieks of “patronage” and “attacking public employees” emanating from the partisan and the ignorant before a bill had even been introduced were a pitiful illustration of how intolerant some people are to even the idea that we should discuss ways to improve our government for the citizens of Wisconsin.

The fall session of the Wisconsin Legislature has the potential to leave a positive legacy for Wisconsin for generations to come. Our elected leaders should steadily continue to push Wisconsin forward.

Tweaking the Wisconsin Retirement System

by Owen | 0646, 22 Sep 1515 | Politics - Wisconsin | 0 Comments

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

State Sen. Duey Stroebel, R-Saukville, is planning to propose two changes to the Wisconsin Retirement System to help keep it solvent for years to come. Although some of the public employee union bosses are already grumbling, Stroebel’s proposed reforms make imminent sense.

The WRS is the primary retirement system for most of Wisconsin’s state and local government employees. It is funded by a public employee trust fund with the stated purpose of “promoting economy and efficiency in public service by facilitating the attraction and retention of competent employees, by enhancing public morale, by providing for the orderly and humane departure from service of employees no longer able to perform their duties effectively …” In other words, the WRS is an employee benefit designed to benefit the citizens by attracting and retaining good employees. It is not a right and it is not immune from modification as the citizens deem necessary and prudent.

The first change that Stroebel is proposing is to increase the early retirement age by two years. Currently, most public employees can retire with partial benefits beginning at the age of 55, while police and firefighters can do so at the age of 50. Stroebel would increase the minimum ages to 57 and 52, respectively. The age to receive full retirement benefits would be left unchanged at 65.

For some perspective, the retirement age for the WRS has not been adjusted for at least 34 years, while the average life expectancy for Americans has risen to almost 79 years old. That means that the statistical average retiree on the WRS could receive early retirement benefits for 24 years after having worked as little as 10 years. Even if the minimum age required to be eligible for this benefit is raised by two years, it is still an incredibly generous benefit as compared to what is available in the general employment marketplace and still fits the mission to help attract and retain good employees.

But more study is needed before arbitrarily raising the age for early retirement. When an older employee retires, it makes room for a younger, less-expensive employee to get a job, thus leaving the taxpayers paying for the retiree and the less-expensive employee. But older employees are also more likely to become injured or disabled, thus increasing the costs for disability and other expenses. Employee Trust Fund staff has also stated that the costs for the reduced benefits paid to early retirees are not fully covered.

The actuaries and accountants should spend some time analyzing Stroebel’s proposal to see if the taxpayers would actually benefit from raising the eligibility age for early retirement before the legislature votes on it. I suspect the taxpayers would benefit, but there is time to make sure.

The second change that Stroebel is proposing is simple and should be passed forthwith. Under current law, a retiree’s retirement benefit is calculated using the three highest years of salary. Stroebel’s proposal would change it to the five highest years of salary.

The problem Stroebel is seeking to mitigate is where public employees manipulate the system to balloon their pension payouts. For decades, in a “take care of our own” system, some public employees would be moved to a highly paid job when they were within a couple years of retirement age in order to increase the retirement payouts. By lengthening the period used for the calculation to five years, it dissuades this behavior and allows for a more-accurate picture of an employee’s compensation level when calculating retirement benefits.

The protectors of the status quo are already ramping up their rhetoric opposing these proposals, claiming they are an attack on public employees. Nothing could be further from the truth. The retirement benefits offered to public employees are generous and will remain generous if these changes are enacted. Continually adjusting employee benefits to reflect the realities of the world we live in today is the duty of our elected officials.

Frankly, Republicans should scrap the entire public employee pension plan and replace it with a defined contribution plan like most other American employees have, but Wisconsin is not yet progressive enough for such positive reforms.

Kremer to propose equal treatment for all transgendered schoolchildren

by Owen | 0809, 15 Sep 1515 | Culture, Politics - Wisconsin | 0 Comments

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

What do you do if you are a transgender kid in Wisconsin attending a public school and you need to use the restroom or change in a locker room? In the world of binary bathrooms — male or female — which one do you go into?

State Rep. Jesse Kremer, R-Kewaskum, will begin circulating a bill in the next few weeks to try to answer these questions for Wisconsin’s public schools. It’s prompted by the different approaches that some school districts are taking with policies regarding transgendered people now.

Whenever looking at an issue like this, it is worth trying to assess the scope of the problem. According to the Social Security Administration, 135,367 people have changed their name to that of another gender wince it was formed in 1936. Of those, 30,006 have medically changed their sex accordingly. In another view, according to the 2010 census, 89,667 people currently living in America changed their names to another gender and 21,833 people medically changed their sex to match. Given the population of the United States, the transgendered population is something like 0.03 percent of our community. There are more people with albinism in America than there are transgendered people. Needless to say, transgendered people are exceedingly rare.

Still, part of the rule of law is that we protect individual liberties irrespective of whether a person is a member of a majority or minority. In this case, however, there are not any individual liberties being threatened. But there are some individual and social sensibilities to consider.

Not to be too graphic, but the reason that we segregate bathrooms and locker rooms by gender is that most people are uncomfortable exposing their genitals or engaging in routine bodily functions in front of members of another gender. In fact, most kids are equally uncomfortable with exposing themselves in front of members of their own gender. But there is not a right to be comfortable at all times.

In the case of a transgendered person, a boy who identifies as a girl might feel more comfortable in the girls’ locker room. At the same time, the other girls in that locker room who also identify as girls may feel uncomfortable with someone who is anatomically indistinguishable from a boy sharing the locker room. Why is the transgender kid’s comfort more important than those around him (or her, if you prefer)?

All of this puts school districts into a quandary. They are tasked with creating and maintaining an environment where kids feel safe to learn. Short of individual unisex bathrooms and locker rooms, how should a school district respond to transgender kids who adamantly oppose sharing a bathroom or locker room with a member of their biological gender? And in our litigious culture, is there any decision that a school district can make that will ward off an expensive lawsuit? Probably not.

That is exactly the problem Kremer wants to eliminate. By passing uniform state standards on the treatment of transgender kids, it takes the onus off of local school districts to create their own standards and moves it to the state where the Department of Justice would be tasked with the duty expense of defending the standards from lawsuits.

Kremer’s bill is quite simple. It says that a school must provide reasonable accommodation for kids who identify as something other than their biological gender. By doing so, it prohibits school districts from forcing transgender kids into an uncomfortable environment, but also does not force a school district to permit a boy who identifies as a girl to congregate in the girls’ locker room. Kremer’s bill is a good middle ground that meets the needs of accommodating a transgender kid while still protecting the sensibilities of non-transgender (gender?) kids.

It is a virtual certainty that the transgendered community is going to pursue any perceived transgressions of their sensibilities through the court system. Kremer’s bill would help save the taxpayers from having to litigate that battle in every district and, instead, allow the issue to be settled in a statewide venue.

Walker’s slump

by Owen | 0658, 8 Sep 1515 | Politics, Politics - Wisconsin | 4 Comments

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

It is far too early to write an obituary for Scott Walker’s first presidential campaign, but his transition from frontrunner to afterthought has been swift.

In a very crowded Republican field, Walker peaked as the front-runner in the Real Clear Politics poll average at 17.3 percent April 1. Since then, he has fallen behind the likes of Donald Trump, Carly Fiorina and Ben Carson to find himself at 5.5 percent in the same poll average.

Investing too much energy in the ups and downs of the latest polls is a fool’s errand this early in the race. The history of presidential politics is littered with the political corpses of people who were popular 15 months before the election. The field is too crowded. The electorate is not paying a lot of attention. And national popularity polls mean little in an election decided by the Electoral College.

But it is clear that that Walker’s campaign has suffered and he has become one of a half dozen viable candidates vying for the Republican nomination. Why?

Part of the reason is that there is a very strong antipolitician vibe reverberating through the Republican voters right now. Almost seven years of an overbearing President Barack Obama coupled with the same almost seven years of weak-kneed Republican Congressional leadership has left Republican voters frustrated and looking for a political outsider to take the helm.

Walker, for all of his accomplishments as governor, is a lifelong politician. Except for a short stint in the private sector after leaving college, Walker has been an elected official for his entire adult life. It is very difficult for a career politician to convince a dubious electorate that he is an outsider even if his accomplishments include massive anti-establishment reforms.

But the other part of the reason for his drop in the polls has to do with Walker’s campaign and Walker himself. Walker’s political success in Wisconsin is rooted in the fierce energy of his supporters. Conservatives who support Walker have turned out in incredible numbers to support his campaigns and cast their votes for him because he has made consequential conservative reforms in Wisconsin. But that conservative support has waned as Walker’s presidential run has matured.

As one of those staunch conservatives who have passionately supported Walker’s policies for years, I, too, feel the same draining of enthusiasm for a President Walker and find myself more enthralled with the candidacies of Carson, Fiorina, and Marco Rubio, but I still think Walker has been the best and most transformational governor of the modern era in Wisconsin. I am still proud of every vote I cast for him and would not hesitate to do so again.

Presidential candidate Walker, however, is not the same as Gov. Walker. Presidential candidate Walker is not the fearless champion of conservatism on the vanguard of political reform that Gov. Walker was. Instead, presidential candidate Walker is a calculating, restrained, packaged, strange anime version of the Gov. Walker we all respect.

As a Wisconsin conservative, presidential candidate Walker’s meddling in Wisconsin’s affairs was more than frustrating. He sat on the sidelines while Wisconsin conservatives pushed for and passed Right to Work and prevailing wage reforms. He denied the Kenosha casino, which would have meant billions of dollars of economic development and thousands of jobs for Wisconsin. He forcefully advocated giving hundreds of millions of tax dollars to build a new arena for the Milwaukee Bucks without even a hint of conservative reluctance to subsidize a profitable private business with the taxpayers’ money. He has spent his time out of state campaigning as conservatives in Wisconsin have continued the conservative revolution he started. And some conservative reforms still undone, like repealing the minimum markup law, would be certain with a strong conservative governor pushing for them.

It is a long time until the citizens of the United States head to the polls to select our newest president. If Gov. Walker were running, he would galvanize the conservative base and have a real shot at taking his brand of revolutionary conservative reforms to Washington. Presidential candidate Walker will refer to this election as “my first try.”

Is there really a teacher shortage?

by Owen | 0643, 1 Sep 1515 | Politics - Wisconsin | 16 Comments

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

The public education industry has lately been pushing a story that there is a teacher shortage in the nation and, in particular, Wisconsin. A closer look at the facts paints a more complex picture than that.

The word “shortage” is a relative term. When someone says there is as “shortage” of teachers, what does that mean? Nationally speaking, there are more teachers than at any time in our history except for a brief blip in the last decade. In fact, the U.S. has been on a decades-long teacherhiring binge as the nation has added teachers six times faster than the number of students since 1970, according to the Cato Institute.

This drove the student-teacher ratio from 22.4 in 1970 to 15.6 in 2015. Meanwhile, over the same period, student achievement remained essentially flat. If there is a teacher shortage, it is partially self-inflicted as we have flooded our education system with teachers without the benefit of a corresponding improvement in student outcomes.

The statistics cited most often as evidence of a teacher shortage in Wisconsin are the amount of teacher turnover and the number of open positions. According to the Wisconsin Education Career Access Network, there are about 1,000 open positions across the state as the school year is beginning. That is a few more than are usually open at this time. Considering that this is roughly 1 percent of all of the public education jobs in Wisconsin, that does not seem particularly troubling. Some businesses in manufacturing and technology envy the low vacancy rate of public education.

The turnover rate for teachers is difficult to pin down. Most studies estimate it at about 17 percent nationally with most turnover happening within the first five years of employment. But it fluctuates based on many factors. For example, teacher turnover tends to increase during strong economic cycles because the regimented wage scales negotiated under union contracts were not attractive in a booming economy when other jobs are plentiful. But even at 17 percent, it is hardly in the upper echelon of industries when it comes to employee turnover.

So is there a teacher shortage in Wisconsin? Except for some specific subject areas, no. For example, according to Ted Neitzke, superintendent of the West Bend School District, they receive more than 100 applicants for every normal K-8 teacher position that is posted. This is similar to what other district are experiencing. But when it comes to some specialized subject areas, there are fewer people in the labor pool. According to the Teacher Shortage Areas Nationwide Listing from the U.S. Department of Education, Wisconsin has a shortage of teachers for things like special education, business, science and math.

What is being misinterpreted as teacher shortage is really the introduction of market dynamics into what used to be a very rigid, closed-labor market. By reducing the relevance of the unions and giving school districts more freedom to manage personnel, teachers are more mobile than ever and school districts are being forced to respond.

Before Act 10, the path for a public school teacher was fairly defined. After graduating from college, they got their first job in a school district. They might change school districts in the first few years as they established a family, but after that teacher turnover was rare. For a teacher to move to another district meant giving up seniority and the pay, benefits and pension that came with it.

After Act 10, teachers have much more freedom to move between districts without being penalized. They can take advantage of jobs in other districts that might pay more, be closer to home, have better advancement opportunities, have better working conditions or whatever reason.

School districts are forced by Act 10 to participate in an active-labor market. No longer can they rely on the fear of losing seniority to keep teachers from leaving. School district administrators can use the power from Act 10 to shed bad teachers and actively recruit better teachers for their district. For the first time, good teachers whose skills are valuable are being called by other districts and offered jobs. School administrators are calling their own good teachers and working with them to keep them on board.

For good teachers, this has been a golden age of opportunity. They can leverage their skills and education to better benefit their families. For bad teachers, it is a time of uncertainty and fear. One thing that is certain is that most public school teachers and administrators have never had to work in a labor environment that is so fluid. Events like a teacher leaving for a better job two weeks before the school year starts did not happen before Act 10. But events like that happen in the rest of the economy every single day.

There is not a general teacher shortage in Wisconsin. Instead, there is a competitive labor market for specialized teaching positions and great teachers that is causing some uncertainty. There are a lot of winners in this new education paradigm. Students and good teachers are benefiting the most.

One final note: If there really were a teacher shortage, one way to alleviate it is to allow educated, skilled professionals to enter the classroom without onerous education and licensing requirements. But the public education establishment fought to keep that out of the budget. Perhaps the rest of us should not take their whining about a teacher shortage crisis seriously until they act like it is actually a crisis.

Walker releases health care reform plan

by Owen | 0703, 25 Aug 1515 | Politics, Politics - Wisconsin | 1 Comment

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

In an effort to remind Republican primary voters there are actually important issues facing our nation that do not involve Donald Trump’s latest bombast, Scott Walker released his plan to repeal and replace Obamacare. Politically, it is a winning issue. Despite years of spinning from President Barack Obama and his minions and billions of taxpayer dollars spent advertising it, Obamacare is still strongly opposed by the American people. According to Real Clear Politics, an average of 48.4 percent of the American people opposes Obamacare with only 40.2 percent supporting it.

But as the old adage goes, one cannot replace something with nothing. Opposing Obamacare is not enough, which is why Walker has released his plan in plenty of time for voters to consider it before they head to the polls.

Essentially, Walker’s plan is to replace Obamacare with a series of reforms that are designed to move health care decisions away from the federal government and toward the consumer while expanding consumers’ choices. As Walker said in his recent column accompanying the release of his plan, “So let’s call Obamacare what it is: the result of a decades-long plan by the most liberal wing of the Democratic Party to seize control of health care choice and freedom from individuals and states and hand total power over to the federal government in Washington.”

Walker is right and his plan is a good start toward shifting that power back into the hands of the people. His plan starts with repealing Obamacare. After that, some of the reforms in Walker’s plan are policies that have been advocated by health care reformers for years.

Walker would allow Americans to shop for insurance in any state. Currently, individuals are prohibited by law from purchasing health insurance across state lines. It is an antiquated legal restriction on the insurance industry that arbitrarily limits consumers’ choice. In a 21st century economy where anyone can sit in front of their computer and buy products from businesses all over the world, it is ridiculous that Americans are still limited to only buying health insurance from companies in their own state. Lifting this restriction would open up the health insurance market to much more competition, to the benefit of consumers.

In his plan, Walker would also offer a refundable tax credit for people who sign up for a health savings account and increase the limit on HSA contributions. HSAs were a Republican reform from 2003 that allow people to keep a portable, tax-free account to pay for a wide array of health care expenses while maintaining a high-deductible insurance plan for catastrophic health care emergencies. HSAs have proven to be a successful tool to control health care costs by giving the health care consumer more control, and more responsibility, over the health care they consume.

There are many more great reforms in Walker’s plan, but there are some bad ideas, too. For example, Walker proposes to provide refundable tax credits to anyone without access to employer-sponsored health insurance, regardless of income. If one accepts the premise that it is the taxpayers’ responsibility to make sure everyone has health insurance, which I do not, then at the very least the taxpayers should only subsidize the health care costs for those who cannot afford it. That is what programs like Medicaid already do. It makes no sense for the taxpayers to give tax credits to wealthy people who can already afford it. Especially in light of our highly progressive federal income tax where the top 20 percent of taxpayers pay 84 percent of the income taxes, such a program is just another transfer of wealth.

Walker’s plan for replacing Obamacare is not perfect, but it is the start of a substantial conversation about a critical political and economic issue. It reminds us that while primary elections tend to focus on the latest poll, gaffe or “gotcha” interview, one of these people is going to be the next President of the United States. Their ideas deserve more attention than their hairstyles.

West Bend’s Mean Streets

by Owen | 0733, 18 Aug 1515 | Politics - Wisconsin | 4 Comments

My column for the West Bend Daily News is online. They’ve changed the platform where I can link to it now. Here it is:

It has long been held the government that has the most impact on one’s daily life is local government. Nothing could be truer than with the responsibility of local government to build and maintain the local streets on which we almost all travel and on which the commerce of a city flows. The city of West Bend’s Transportation Committee met last week to gather input about if and how the city should go about improving the overall quality of the city’s streets.

Measuring the overall quality of a city’s streets is no easy task. It is common for people to grouse about the streets because they are the most visible element of a city’s infrastructure. People drive, walk or ride on them every hour of every day, but virtually no one traverses all of the city’s streets in a year — much less a day. As such, someone’s perception of a city’s streets is largely driven by their experience on the streets that take them on their daily errands.

For example, my perception of West Bend’s streets is that they are pretty good. The streets between my home, church and frequent retail destinations are all in good condition. But when I occasionally find myself in some of the older parts of the city, the streets could use some work. For people who live and work in those older neighborhoods, their perception is likely that the streets of the city are in poor shape.

This makes it difficult for city leaders to use citizen complaints as a measurement of overall street quality. Citizen complaints are a very subjective view and one where one cranky citizen on a bad street with an axe to grind can give a massively skewed vision of reality.

In order to be more objective about measuring the aggregate quality of streets in the city, West Bend adopted the Pavement Surface Evaluation and Rating scale as a more-objective measurement tool. The PASER scale, which was developed by the University of WisconsinMadison Transportation Information Center, measures pavement on a scale of one to 10 with 10 being a brand new street. The scale is not perfect. It is still somewhat subjective because it only uses a visual inspection, but it allows a fairly straightforward way to measure the quality of West Bend’s roughly 130 miles of streets.

The PASER rating is calculated every other year. In 2011, some folks were concerned because West Bend’s overall PASER rating dropped to 5.89, as compared to a benchmark of 6.11 in 2005. In response, the city has increased spending for streets by about 25 percent over the past several years. In the most recent rating in 2013, the city’s PASER rating climbed to 6.05. The 2015 rating has not yet been released.

All of this brings us to the meeting last week in which the committee asked the citizens if they want better streets, and if so, how would they like to pay for them?

For the first question, it is easy for citizens to say they want better roads, but at what cost? West Bend’s current PASER rating is actually above average for cities of a similar size in Wisconsin. The estimates are that if the taxpayers increase spending on streets by about 150 percent, it would raise the city’s PASER rating by about one rating.

Going back to people’s perceptions, if the city’s overall rating is a 7.05 instead of a 6.05, would the citizens be more satisfied? That depends on whether or not any given citizen is able to take advantage of better streets. According to Alderman Rich Kasten, who chaired the committee, they have not found any study that correlates PASER rating with citizen satisfaction. We do not know if a PASER rating of seven versus six will have any perceptible impact on citizen satisfaction or if the PASER rating is really only good for prioritizing street construction projects.

As for the second question, if the citizens of West Bend want to improve their overall street conditions, the only way to do it is to spend more. That money has to come from somewhere. The committee formally asked for input on five options and discussed a sixth. The options were a (1) wheel tax; (2) garbage fee; (3) grants; (4) special assessment; (5) property tax increase; and (6) a city sales tax increase that is not currently permitted by state law, but is under consideration in Madison.

In short order, the answers to the options should be (1) no; (2) no way; (3) yes; (4) absolutely not; (5) nope; and (6) are you kidding me?

At this point, West Bend has already increased spending on streets substantially, but has not yet seen the full effect of that increased spending. The PASER rating increased in 2013 and will likely do so again when the 2015 ratings are tabulated.

Even if that were not the case, the city’s rating is already higher than those of similar cities. It is not justifiable for the city to increase spending even further — much less impose additional taxes — to increase a rating that has no known measurable impact on citizen satisfaction.

Kudos to the city of West Bend’s Transportation Committee for actively engaging the citizens in this important discussion about a critical responsibility of city government. They should advise the Common Council to stay the course, apply for grants that are available and continue to focus on prioritizing projects with an eye to overall citizen satisfaction.

Repeal Wisconsin’s Minimum Markup Law

by Owen | 0710, 11 Aug 1515 | Politics - Wisconsin | 7 Comments

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

It is always exciting to see new businesses move into Wisconsin. Meijer, which is headquartered just across the lake in Grand Rapids, is moving aggressively into Wisconsin. Four Meijer Supercenters are already open and several more are planned — including a massive, morethan 192,000 square-foot store in West Bend. But Meijer is finding that some of Wisconsin’s antiquated and anti-free market laws are threatening its growth.

The communities in which Meijer is building new stores in southeast Wisconsin is already saturated with grocery stores. Meijer is moving into those communities knowing full well that they will have to compete in a market where supply is already ample. As such, virtually all of the business Meijer plans to attract will have to come at the expense of already-existing grocery businesses. This business plan is not unique. Many businesses begin in already-mature markets and do quite well.

One of the ways Meijer plans to grow their business is to attract consumers with lower prices. It is a tried-and-true technique to gain market share. But therein lies the rub. Some of the prices that Meijer is advertising for their goods are less than their cost. That act violates Wisconsin’s Unfair Sales Act, more commonly called the minimum markup law.

Wisconsin’s minimum markup law became law in 1939 during the Great Depression as part of a spate of reactionary, anti-free market laws passed by the legislature. It essentially mandates that all businesses sell their products at a certain markup over their cost. The stated purpose of it is to prevent businesses from selling a product at below cost, thus driving other sellers of that product out of business. Then, so the logic goes, the business that was selling the product below cost will jack up the price and gouge consumers. Advocates for the minimum markup law contend that it ultimately protects consumers.

The problem with the advocates’ logic is that it never happens. Wisconsin is the only state in the nation with a minimum markup law — none of the other 49 states have a problem with that theoretical outcome. Instead, what happens is that when a business begins to gouge consumers with inflated prices, other businesses take advantage of the market opening to move in. In other words, in a free market, the laws of supply and demand rule to regulate prices, if only the market is kept free.

There have been attempts over the years to repeal the minimum markup law, but even in a Republican Legislature those efforts have failed. The reason is as simple as looking at who benefits from the law. Existing business interests benefit from the minimum markup law because it inhibits new entrants to the market from competing on the price of goods. In West Bend, for example, existing grocery stores are thrilled that the minimum markup law will prohibit Meijer from attracting customers with lower prices. The minimum markup law is a protectionist racket that insulates existing businesses from competition.

On the other hand, it is the consumers who lose with the minimum markup law. Instead of lower prices caused by competition in a free market, consumers are forced to pay unnaturally inflated prices in order to protect the very businesses that are charging them those inflated prices.

The time has long-since passed for Wisconsin to repeal the minimum markup law. There is still work for the legislature to do this year and repealing the minimum markup law needs to be near the top of the list.

Pollard Paroled

by Owen | 0552, 4 Aug 1515 | Foreign Affairs, Law, Politics | 2 Comments

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

On Nov. 21 — 30 years to the day after his arrest — Jonathan Pollard will be released on parole from a federal prison in Butner, North Carolina. As such, one of the most prolific and damaging spies in American history will breathe free air again with the full consent of the federal government and President Barack Obama’s administration.

In the mid-’80s, Jonathan Pollard was a civilian employee at the Navy Field Operational Intelligence Office who worked for the government as an analyst. In 1985, a coworker noticed that Pollard was removing a lot of classified material for destinations unknown and reported the activity. Pollard’s boss also saw classified material on Pollard’s desk that was unrelated to his work. After an investigation, it was discovered that Pollard had signed out a tremendous amount of classified material for which there was no good explanation.

After more investigating, Pollard was arrested outside of the Israeli embassy with classified documents in his possession. He subsequently pled guilty to espionage and was sentenced to life in prison. The full extent of his activity reads like a bad novel, but it is all nauseatingly true.

During a period of about 17 months, Pollard sold a tremendous amount of classified material to the Israeli government. One report estimates that the physical documents he stole would, appropriately, fill a prison cell of 6 feet by 6 feet by 10 feet.

While the full extent of the stolen documents are still undisclosed, some of what we do know shows the extent of damage done. For example, Pollard gave the Israelis more than 1,800 unredacted messages, cables and reports that showed how American intelligence collected data and their sources — including reports from the Sixth Fleet’s Air Reconnaissance Squadron TWO in the Mediterranean, whose information the Israeli’s used in their 1985 bombing of the PLO headquarters in Tunis. Pollard also stole the entire 10-volume Radio and Signal Intelligence manual, which gives a complete roadmap to American signal intelligence including frequencies, sources, and locations.

For all of this, Pollard was paid cash — a lot of it — and allegedly promised a good life in Israel to end out his days.

Pollard’s case has been a cause clbre for three decades as a lightning rod for the Jewish community and American- Israeli relations. They contend that the fact he spied for an ally should soften his punishment. Four American presidents, however, have refused clemency and opposed his release since his capture. Obama has decided that it is time for him to be free. The Justice Department announced that it would not oppose his release and he was subsequently paroled.

Some pundits are opining that Obama’s support of Pollard’s release is an act designed to appease Israel and ease relations after the abominable nuclear deal with Iran, whereby the United States lifted sanctions and gave Iran a pathway to becoming a nuclear power. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been a vocal advocate for Pollard’s release and even visited him in prison in 2002. Perhaps Obama sees the release of Pollard as an olive branch to Israel as he sharpened Iran’s spears.

But Obama did not have any input into the timing of Pollard’s parole hearing. That was a simple matter of math and the provisions of his sentence. No, the release of Pollard is the result of a much deeper worldview in which America is merely one of many nations and not exceptional in any way. Obama is fine with Pollard being released because Obama does not think that betraying America’s secrets is that big of a deal.

The same mindset is seemingly behind Obama’s inaction on Hillary Clinton’s massive security breach. In that case, Clinton kept tens of thousands of emails — including countless ones containing classified information — on a private server without appropriate security. At the same time, millions of dollars flowed into Clinton’s private foundation from foreign governments. Is there a connection? Obama and his justice department do not appear to think keeping America’s secrets out of the hands of other nations is important enough to seriously investigate.

Pollard deserves to rot in prison for the rest of his natural life for his betrayal of our nation. Instead, he will walk out of prison in a few months with the full support of our president and Justice Department. What interesting times we live in.

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Walker’s slump

Is there really a teacher shortage?

Walker releases health care reform plan

West Bend’s Mean Streets

Repeal Wisconsin’s Minimum Markup Law

Pollard Paroled

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