It’s called ‘pandering,’ we think,
therefore, we are!
Is Mayor Satya Rhodes Conway trying to lose next April’s election (assuming she is running for a second term)? If so, thank you very much. She now proposes to buy the votes of city employees with $1,000 checks.
That might win her the votes of all 2,900 city workers — many of whom would vote her way, regardless. But we think the price will be at the expense of the other over-taxed 77,000 voters who went to the polls in the last mayoral election. (Where have you gone, Paul Soglin?) Didn’t County Exec Joe Parisi try a similar gambit? It was shot down by the uber-Left county board of supervisors.
Mayor Satya’s ploy is not playing well. On NextDoor social media, Michael S. Goodman writes, “City employees already earn more and have better benefits than their colleagues who work for the state, to say nothing of defined benefit pensions.” Retired Common Council coordinator Lisa Veldran writes, “Not sure why this money can’t go to our local food pantries to help those even in more need.”
How much like Joe Biden’s college loan forgiveness, this give-away! Odd how the politics of resentment breeds more resentment.
‘Culture matters’
Democrats shouldn’t count on abortion moving the electoral needle, moderate Democrat theorist Ruy Teixeira writes. “The current Democratic brand suffers from multiple deficiencies that make it somewhere between uncompelling and toxic to wide swathes of American voters.”
The cultural left in and around the Democratic party has managed to associate the party with a series of views on crime, immigration, policing, free speech, and … race and gender that are quite far from those of the median voter. These unpopular views are further amplified by Democratic-leaning media and nonprofits.
Speaking of the abortion, the Dane County Board of Supervisors is considering cutting off funding on programs or services involved in the investigation or prosecution of any person for violating the state’s ban on abortion. (They’re voting tonight on this proposed ordinance.) Would they defund their own sheriff or district attorney if it came to that? Still and all, pro-abortion is probably a vote-getter in Dane County.
Speaking of crime … Three separate fights broke out at or around Madison East high school during the lunch hour Wednesday 09-21-22. The school brought in Madison Police (banned from campus the last couple of years “to support our students’ safe return to school,” Principal Mikki D. Smith told parents. “As an extra layer of safety, we asked students returning from lunch to show their school ID cards in order to re-enter the building.”
In one of the fights, Madison police say four suspects beat a student and that “charges are forthcoming.” No word on medical condition.
The not-so Great Carnak
We quote from The Dispatch: In an interview with Sean Hannity on Fox News, Trump asserted the right to declassify documents telepathically. “If you’re the president of the United States, you can declassify just by saying ‘it’s declassified’— even by thinking about it.”
Blaska’s Bottom Line: Democrats have their insufferable Woke virtue signalers. But we Republicans have our crazies. We think.
Education
Blaska Policy Werkes 
I think it is sad that the left wing pols have no respect for the private sector. It needs to be a requirement to work in a for profit business to hold public office. People without that experience lack the perspective to make sound public policy decisions. The saddest part is the hate for the system that put them in the ivory tower in the first place.
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Thinking about the newest recipient of the “Just got off the bus from Crivitz” award: Channel 3’s McKenna Alexander! (applause track)
https://www.channel3000.com/survey-black-employees-left-out-of-higher-positions-in-madison/
She breathlessly describes survey results of black employment in Madison as “a wake up call” and “jarring”. Gee thanks McKenna we had no idea until your report.
Can’t wait until she digs into the Dane County Jail stats.
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Too bad no one talks about qualified applicants. The local government agency I worked for always looked for qualified minorities and women to fill openings. Since my department had no unskilled jobs it was always a problem. If the government can’t find qualified skilled employees the private sector has a bigger problem. Now think about management and supervisor jobs.
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I am a retired uw prof. For several years, I sat on the cell and molecular biology grad program. We had few Black applicants and they all were woefully unqualified. None of them had taken calculus in college and our landmark course required a knowledge of calculus based physical chemistry. We struggled greatly with that, wanting to admit more minority students, but also not wanting to set them up to fail. Like you, we found too few qualified applicants.
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I’m also a retired UW prof. Unfortunately, I taught in the humanities rather than in the sciences, which means that our standards for job applicants was considerably more, shall we say, flexible. The result is that we routinely hired black applicants who were woefully underqualified, with predictable results–one of which was, in fact, catastrophic. However, we were able to crow about our “commitment to diversity,” which was the point anyway. I happened to be on the hiring committee one year and made the mistake of championing a candidate who by all objective standards was spectacularly qualified but labored under one insurmountable burden–he was a white male. As I was making the case for hiring him, I was subjected to the outraged glares of at least half the committee members. When the black candidate resigned after one year (and after many student complaints about her incompetence), I blush to admit I couldn’t resist sending an “I told you so” (what Gore Vidal called the most satisfying four words in the English language) e-mail to my colleagues who had been so staunchly committed to diversity and inclusion.
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“students returning from lunch to show their school ID cards in order to re-enter the building” — Student IDs? Sounds racist to me. Shame on Madison!
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It only took 3 weeks for the fights to breakout at East HS. It couldn’t have been too big since I didn’t see it in the paper or on TV. Maybe MMSD has a new “no bad news” policy.
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Does the Mayor know how many of the 2900 employee’s actually live in the city? She’s probably not buying that many votes.
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It’s difficult to say for sure (considering the abysmal state of local reporting here in Emerald City), but it appears the $1000. initiative isn’t funded by general revenue funds, but by money already collected from the wages of prospective recipients. If so, give it back to the “donors” and maybe keep government’s fingers out of their pockets in the future.
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Any body of government that finds any surplus funds should be required to apply such funds directly to debt service, that’s what’s best for tax payers…
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Blaska asked, “Are they trying to lose?”
No and I say that because I think they’re so pompously arrogant that they actually think they can’t lose.
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Seeing the largest increase in assessment s in years, sure why not.
Dec tax bill should be show and tell.
Kid got attacked at East HS by 4. Where are the resource officers when u need them.
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That’s why MMSD hired all the social workers. They are suppose to talk them out of fighting. When Madison replaces the police with social workers they will stop crime by talking to criminals.
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They must think kids all these years will let them just talk them out of crime. Ya, sure, wink ink.
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You would think that Satya would have figured out long ago that selling yourself with other peoples money still makes you a slut. Many politicians, wether they be male or female do the same. Mostly those on the demoncratic side of the isle but not limited to them.
So, each of the city workers will get a $1,000 bucks just for being a city worker? Wow, must be nice to be a city worker. Tell the average worker, say someone who is a brick layer, or a carpenter, or a heating and air-conditioning worker, or a cook or a bartender or what ever that they will eventually pay for those city workers a $1,000 dollars so that city workers will vote for Satya, well just imagine their response.
She, like many politicians should figure out what she could do to make Madison a better place for all of us. Wether rich or poor, black or white, young or old, figure out what the PEOPLE NEED and fill that need to the best of your ability!
Do that and maybe we’ll vote for you. Pay off your city workers with our money and we will gladly tell you to kiss off in what I call polite terms.
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“just imagine their response.”
Bravo Indigo November Golf Oscar!
This is DementiaJoKe’s Student Loan Forgiveness Plan writ small.
Both he-n-SRC are blinded by their all-consuming hyper-partisanship, and arrogantly believe their base will swallow anything lock-steppin’, glassy-eyein’, & unquestionin’.
A Hard Rain Gonna Fall!
The Gotch
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That last sentence describes trump and anyone who speaks at his rallies. Funny stuff.
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“How odd the politics of resentment breeds more resentment.” Really? Resentment is one of those human vices that is never sated; it breeds like the COVID virus in a Chinese lab. Have you ever heard someone with official victimhood status say, “You know, I think you’ve apologized/groveled/reparated enough for now, thanks”?
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