I’ve always thought it was interesting that we live in one of the most technologically advanced ages, but the political discourse that much of the public seems to subscribe could be cut right out of an episode of “The Flintstones”.

One of the biggest and most dishonest pieces of rhetoric is “cut taxes”. We’ve all heard it. Sometimes the candidate that simply says they will cut taxes prevails — much like if Fred Flintstone said, “rock good”.

The result of elections where this type of thing prevails can be disasterous as we saw several years back when a bunch of “cut taxes” politicians in California did just that and decided that a scheme investing in high-yield derivatives would allow them to maintain services while cutting taxes. Well Orange County lost big and rather than blame the simplistic politicians, Orange County resident blamed the derivatives. Now in the same state, Governor Arnold Schwartzenegger wants to borrow money to pay for operating expenses and the debt load is growing out of control and their bond rating is poised to suffer.

Locally we have Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker who has consistently used the same rhetoric and the voters have rewarded him by returning him to office. The problem is that the public doesn’t have a solid grasp on what he has done to the fiscal state of the County. Walker has done what Schwartzenegger has done — he has borrowed heavily to pay for ongoing operating expenses. As an example, the pension plan which Milwaukee County is legally committed to funding is not fully funded. Walker has invested the funds in risky places and has lost big. Voters have to make up the difference but Walker has simply borrowed money so voters don’t realize that their taxes have gone sky high because of his poor decisions. The irony here is that Walker did receive a large chunk of money via a lawsuit against Mercer for bad advice the county was given regarding their pension plans several years ago. Where did that money go?

Operating expenses.

After all, why tax when you can borrow to pay for expenses? That way you can put off todays expenses and get all the benefits of a public happy with a sustained level of services. Of course this isn’t sustainable but the public doesn’t know that. Since Walker is running for Governor, it won’t much matter to him if he loses because the next guy will have to figure out how to pay the bill that Walker has run up. It’s a bit like inviting someone to a dinner party at a restaurant and leaving the last guy to arrive with the check.

The reality is that Walker’s over simplistic message has no place in good government and a trite “cut taxes” has about as much substance as “yabadabadoo”.

What happens when you’ve worked really hard on your campaign, talked to many people including many who disagree with you, then spent the next two years trying to raise money while hearing from people who support the opposing party anyway that the President is doing a horrible job?

Well you vote against what the President supports, right?

Unfortunately right in several instances. The democrats in the senate from historically conservative districts are doing exactly what the conservative democrats did in Clintons mid-term election. They’re running for their lives from all that is perceived as liberal. But like the democratic congressmen and congresswomen running for office in Clinton’s mid-term, they will lose their seats.

They will lose their seat not because their own districts did not believe in the same things they believe in. They will lose their seats because they lacked the backbone to accomplish anything that separates them from the republicans. They chose to listen, not to the many people who supported them, but rather to the people who opposed them in the past and to those who will oppose them next November. They should lose. They deserve to lose. After all, if democrats can’t even rally around an issue as fundamentally democratic as healthcare as a right as opposed to healthcare only for the rich, and we’re clearly moving in that direction, cowardly democrats deserve to lose.

But is this, or should it be all doom and gloom for democrats? Of course not. Remember, this is a new crew of democrats than in Clinton’s mid-term. They don’t have the experience of seeing their red-state democratic friends box up their belongings to clear out their offices for the next wave of rabid republicans.

And yes, they do deserve to lose.

This may be the year that congressional democrats are given their virtual pink slips, but the remaining democrats will see who wins their seats and who loses. Those who fought the tough fight and held firm on a public option will go home and campaign this fall. Some of them will win and return to the Senate and the House. The Senators who opposed the pubic option but did not fall as they were not up for re-election will see this and maybe some of them will find a little courage knowing that when a democrat stands for a democratic ideal, they are rewarded by the electorate, but a democrat who stands for nothing will almost always be punished. (I can’t help but be reminded of the first Batman movie where Jack Nicholson’s Joker character proclaimed, “this town needs an enema”.)

To top it off, democrats still hold the White House and President Obama is every bit as shrewd as his predecessor. There is little doubt that he will take every opportunity to bash a new Republican house which opposes is every move. There is little doubt that he will place the blame for failures exactly where it belongs — on the obstructionists.

And that, is the short version of why Obama will be rewarded by the electorate with a second term.

2009 was a horrible year.

The economy threw many people out of work and many of those that continued to work were underemployed and of course the stock market tanked.

A spate of deaths among family and friends in late 2008 was carried forward with the loss of my Grandfather in 2009. On top of that, this site was hacked and it took a huge effort to get things back and running smoothly and safely.

I held out hope for a public option for healthcare but that didn’t happen. Milwaukee County government, under the glazed eyed Scott Walker, saw the loss of more services and raised their debt load even more to pay for ongoing operating expenses. All this despite winning a sizable sum in a lawsuit which, ironically, was only won because County leaders (who Walker demonized in his successful effort to win his seat in 2001) were given misleading information which led to a costly mistake.

Anti-reform advocates came together to fight against a plan to turn MPS governance over to the City of Milwaukee, despite the fact that MPS, under the not-so-watchful eye of a part-time school board, has had failing marks for years. Of course when businesses locate to a community they look to the Mayor to find out what is going on with a city and speculate on whether they wil have an adequately educated workforce. Since MPS Board members don’t have to deal with those issues, and they can’t anyway because they have to work full-time jobs to support their own families, the problems are kept from them, as is the blame for a failing system.

In Brown Deer, Village officials lacked vision and understanding of diversity approved another senior housing complex at he exclusion of working families and children. With the trend of seniors organizing to oppose nearly every school referrendum on the ballot, this may well tip the balance from a family friendly community to an educational black hole.

Unemployment stands at just over 10% (worse for minorities), many people have lost their homes to forclosure due to the fact that lending and investments have been largely deregulated by Republicans in the last 30 years and of course the swine flu outbreak (H1N1 if you want a more sterilized way of putting it).

If there was a silver lining, it was the folks down at City Hall in Milwaukee. Despite having investments which hurt the pension plan investments for all governments, Mayor Tom Barrett and the City Council passed a budget that funded the plan for retirees by 99% and didn’t borrow money to do it. They cut back in many areas but still managed to keep the costs down to the rate of inflation. On top of that, Barrett hasn’t given up on the plan to turn MPS over to the City and now has both the Governor and key State Senators on his side. Fortunately Barrett has chosen to run for Governor, unfortunately so has Walker. The outcome of that race will help to decide whether 2010 will suck also or whether it will bring hope for a new and responsible 2011.

On a personal and more positive note, I just became a Godfather for a wonderful little niece of mine named Anna.

So there’s still hope for 2010.

There is a lot of rhetoric right now about who is a conservative and who is a liberal one and what type of candidate is better for Wisconsin. Next November we will have two candidates to choose. It appears that the Democratic nominee is Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett. Republicans must choose whether they prefer former Congressman Mark Neumann or Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker as their nominee. Just as important as who will be chosen, is how the public will be informed of what the candidates stand for and whether they are telling the truth.

Republicans seem to have chosen Scott Walker as their golden boy to spite the fact that the primary has not even yet. This seems odd since Walker has far more negatives than does Neumann. As the Milwaukee County executive, Scott Walker has sold finite assets and borrowed money to pay for ongoing expenses. Still, Walker claims that he is a conservative candidate. Rather than look at any substance Republicans seem happy to line up behind him.

This is proof that the Republican leadership – that is the ones that are pulling all the strings, have little interest in traditional conservative values these days. Big ideas have little value to them. What they do put a value on though is electability above all costs and Walker now has a track record of running aggressive and simplistic campaigns which have won him a few elections.

Walker has run his campaigns on a simple message – taxes are bad and his opponent, whoever it is or whatever they believe in or have stood for in the past, is for big taxes. His simplistic demonizing and redefining his opponent has worked well for him since the media has happily been complacent in spreading Walker’s propaganda rather than reporting the news and doing any fact checking.

But will it work this time?

Nationally there has been a sea change in how news is covered. Republicans on the national scene have been successful at demonizing Democrats and, for the most part, the entire mainstream media has gone along and “reported” the horrible claims that Republicans have had about Democrats as though they were facts. This all changed just a few years ago when Comedy Central’s The Daily Show came on the scene and showed the absurdity of the claims. As ratings soared, The Colbert Report quickly followed, providing the only liberal balance to the mainstream media. Despite its comical setting, liberal and moderate viewers began to think of The Daily Show as one of the only honest reporter of the news. Seeing soaring ratings on Comedy Central, NBC responded by starting to report the news and by starting to do some fact checking. MSNBC brought on two liberal commentators, Keith Olberman and Rachel Maddow. Both have become extremely popular.

But there is no local Olberman and there is no local Maddow.

Without fact checking from the mainstream Wisconsin media, Will Walker be successful in his bid to demonize Barrett?

That is still unknown because while we do not have our local Olberman or Maddow, we do have blogs. There are plenty of blogs out there that offer little to no insight into what is happening, but if you take the time to look, and keep in mind the perspective of the writer, you can still gain insight into a candidate and an issue.

The best blogs out there are the ones where the writers have some experience or have done some investigation into issues. And no, I’m not talking about someone who has surfed the web and now considers themselves an expert. There are blogs, such as Eye on Wisconsin, written by Private Investigator Cory Liebmann, which state facts and even will take the time to pull public records to support an argument. Then there are blogs from former public employees such as James Rowen’s blog, The Political Environment. Former Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reporter Gretchen Schulz writes an informative blog called Milwaukee Rising where she explores mass transit, parks issues and all things Milwaukee. New Urbanist Dave Reid does a good job with his blog Urban Milwaukee. And of course I’ve written Watchdog Milwaukee from the perspective of a former County Supervisor and former Planning Commissioner for years.

Are the blogs on par with Maddow or Olberman—of course not, but they do help to disseminate information to the public who is thirsty for more than just Republican talking points.

Of course there are traditional republican blogs where the focus is all talking points all the time. You’ll find little disagreement on these blogs and no new ideas to solve complex problems, but if you’re looking for well linked blogs that link to other republican blogs, the republicans have that mastered.

But back to the Governor’s race.

The interesting thing about this race is that the republican blogs pretty much all lined up behind Walker. The mainstream media appears to have given Walker its blessing despite the fact that his opponent, Mark Neuman is a former Congressman with extensive private sector experience. Yes, it is odd that the Republican Party of Wisconsin, who preaches about how government should be run like a business, appears to be turning its back on a successful businessman like Neuman, but is embracing Walker who has never held a private sector job in his life.

Am I the only one sensing a conflict here?

Over the better part of the next year we will see these campaigns being covered more or less by the media. It will be interesting to see if the mainstream media continues to ignore Neuman and if the winner of the Republican nomination gets a free pass as it has in the past. But maybe, just maybe, it won’t matter what ideas or facts the mainstream media wants to limit our facts to this time. Maybe, just maybe, voters will seek out informative blogs to get the real stories.

We have to do something right? The public is expecting some sort of compromise correct? If we do not get something passed, we will not really be doing our jobs now will we?

This is the crux of the problem in Congress today with the debate on health care.

Many Democrats want national health care, real national health care that is — – health care that includes a public option. Republicans have made it clear that they are going to block any public option with a filibuster.

It is really quite obscene.

Democrats require a 60 vote majority to cut off debate and end a filibuster. The only way they can get to 60 is if they include the vote of Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman who currently caucuses with the Democrats.

Lieberman has stated that he will oppose any healthcare bill that includes a public option. So, despite having over 50% of the seats in the United States Senate, Democrats can not get a healthcare bill passed that will actually help people. The compromise plan put forward will require everyone to have health insurance. This bill is little more than a big gift for the insurance industry.

What has happened is that the Democrats have given up on a public option. They have given up on the one plan that would actually help many Americans. Instead they sought a compromise that would effectively help and no one but the insurance industry — key contributors to the Republican Party.

This is a slap in the face to everyone who held out hope, to everyone who dared to think that things could get better, to everyone that collectively joined on election day in November 2008 and thought the same words that they been hearing on the campaign trail — yes we can.

Is this what keeping hope alive is? Are we supposed to say yes we can, when Congress continues to say, no we can’t.

Seniors are being scared out of their wits by this healthcare debate. They are being told that there will be death panels — a manufactured fallacy put forth by failed vice presidential hopeful, Sarah Palin. They are being told that health care for all will lead to rationing. They are being told that extending Medicare to people younger than 65 years old, is a horrible plan.

They are being told a lie.

Let us stop fooling ourselves into believing that we do not have healthcare rationing now. When health insurance companies deny claims for people who are seeking necessary and needed healthcare procedures, our health care is being rationed. Why would we pass a bill in Congress that would give the same people who have been rationing healthcare additional funding?

When I look back to when I was in my 20s, I went several years without health insurance. Yes, it was risky, but I had to make an ugly choice. I had to choose whether I would use my pay from my part-time job to pay for tuition, or to pay for health insurance. The irony was that at that time in my life I was working for a health insurance company. They did not offer health insurance to their part-time employees. I chose my education over feeding the health insurance industry.

For the most part my risk paid off. I earned my bachelor’s degree and lived through several years of not having health insurance. But it was not without incident. I was in my 20s and a drunken bar patron unexpectedly decided to punch me in the nose. It broke. I bled profusely. The next morning when I looked in my bathroom mirror, my nose was about a half-inch to the left of where it should have been. Overnight, my nose had set itself and I did not have the insurance to go into the doctor’s office and have it professionally set so I re-broke my own nose, moved it back to the center of my face, and it eventually healed.

It should not have been necessary.

Even today there are many people who have to tend to their own wounds, seek their own home remedies, and hope and pray that they will be okay. They do this because, like me back in my 20s, they cannot afford health care insurance. This is rationing in its worst form and yet congressional Republicans are telling us that somehow the system that we have no is better than a system where I could have gone in to see a doctor? Sadly, Democrats, who by the way are in the majority, are going along with it.

This new plan is flawed. It fails to address one of the key problems with healthcare — rationing as it exists today. To pass this plan is no service to the public. To pass this plan helps only the insurance industry. It forces people to buy health insurance — people like I was in my 20s. If this plan had been in effect in the 80s, I would not have had the opportunity to choose college tuition over what likely would have been a substandard insurance policy.

Went to Outback in Waukesha County tonight.

Amusing fact — over half of the men in the restaurant were wearing baseball caps… and yes, during dinner. My how things change.