Is Madison ready to quit the crazy?

We hear things!

Ran into Mike Verveer at Bob Keller’s funeral a week ago at Bethel Lutheran Church. Mike is by far Madison’s longest-serving alder — 30 years! We asked if the Council would finally pull the plug on the do-nothing Independent Police Monitor and its anti-cop Police Civilian Oversight Board.

He thought maybe one of the 20 alders might but did not vow to do so him himself, despite his leadership role. Which is beyond frustrating, given the open window provided by the over-paid police monitor himself — s/he just resigned after three years of doing zero monitoring in an office budgeted at $509,000 a year. Robin Copley said he is triggered by … police violence. Those icky police!

The City created the duplicative position five years ago in an over-reaction to the death of petty criminal George Floyd in Minneapolis and drug-addled Tony Robinson here in town. Took the Oversight Board two years to fill the position. First, its 11 members had to get their pronouns right. Took a lawsuit from yours truly to strike the racial quota the council mandated on membership. City ordinance mandated the Oversight Board include criminal offenders.

Democrats elected a sheriff who calls the inmates in his jail “residents.” Dane County is the fastest-growing county in the state. County supervisors are building a smaller jail. City alders and school board members defunded school resource police officers because not enough white kids were being arrested.

Politics in greater Madison WI comes in one color: deep, cobalt blue. Keep your head down if you dissent from Mark Pocan & The Squad.

Progressive hegemony in these parts is near total. Can be traced to Scott Walker’s Act 10 in 2011, which clipped (but did not cripple) public employee unions in this government town. To this fertile hotbed comes a made-to-order villain, the uncouth insurrectionist, Donald Trump. Let’s face it — he makes a good many Republicans queasy.

But what explains pulling down the statue of Colonel Heg, the abolitionist who gave his life fighting slavery in the Civil War? Or fire-bombing the City-County Building? Looting the jewelry store run by the philanthropic (and Jewish) Goodman brothers? Or firing the dedicated “behavior coach” at Whitehorse middle school because he tried to discipline the wrong demographic? Another form of vandalism.

The peace of Madison the last few years is the triumph of Brandi Grayson’s bullhorn over reasoned debate. Now the county is paying her $292,235 salary. (Still claims she is a victim of “white men.”) Try arguing for a return of police to our troubled high schools, then expect to be doxxed. (Ask me how I know.) There is little debate because the cause of diversity is only (literally) skin deep. Sun Prairie schools chose as a high school dean of students a 28-year-old man with no teacher’s license but with (we suspect) the requisite demographic. He’s on trial, accused as a sexual predator.

Why can’t we pluck low-hanging fruit?

After all this time, city, school, and county elected leaders cannot overcome their addiction to identity politics and redistribution. Why can’t we:

• Approve police body-worn cameras.
• Audit the $322 million in county welfare contractors to ferret out duplication, over-paid CEOs, and political favoritism. 
• Ban cell phones in the classroom.
• Balance our budgets.

Blaska’s Bottom Line: Why can’t we? Because a coalition of well organized, deeply entrenched ultra-progressive entities is playing with house money. Dissenters are intimidated from speaking, much less from placing their names on the ballot.

Hellz Bellz, the University of Wisconsin removed a 42-ton glacial boulder from campus after the Black Student Union stumbled upon a yellowed 1925 newspaper article in which someone referred to the big stone with a long-since forgotten racial epithet. 

What local elected official said:
‘That’s just crazy!’?

(We can’t think of any, either)