You won’t go wrong with this agenda!
Hard to believe it is 2026. Still remember the wonderment at the clock turning over to a new millennium, well, 26 years ago. (Still can’t count out Y2K freezing our computers.) In any event, we begin Year 10 of Blaska Policy Werkes with an annual tradition: the Head Groundskeeper’s political agenda for the new year.
“This situation requires a really stupid and futile gesture be done on somebody’s part. And Blaska is just the guy to do it.” — after the frat boys in Animal House
Platinum-level Subscribers may recognize some agenda items, since most of them have never been adopted, likely due to their authorship. This year’s batch is recycled from the draft agenda of Sensible Dane, a would-be local political party bruited about as an antidote to Progressive Dane and its doppelgänger, the Democratic Party of Dane County. And the teachers union, the government employees union, so-called Working Families Party, Mamdani/John Nichols socialists, and other Wobblies in this UniParty town.
Instead of being started in a little red schoolhouse in Ripon WI, our little claque was hatched by two over-served caffeine addicts at a hip coffeehouse on Monroe Street — the other being a former left-leaning elected official who has now turned to the dark side: writing.
Dummied up a website and cobbled together some center-right folks but the star attraction, my co-conspirator, backed out, saying we had the right ideas but Blaska is the wrong guy. With that caveat emptor in mind, the Wrong Man proposes the Right Agenda for 2026:
Government you can afford:
- Freeze property tax referenda for 5 years. Revenue is not the problem; spending is.
- Future spending referenda must publish the impact on residential tax burden.
- Resist taking on new governmental programs; avoid mission creep.
- Audit the $322 million in county welfare contractors to ferret out duplication, over-paid CEOs, and political favoritism. (How many Quality Learing Centers in Dane County?)
- Abolish the do-nothing Independent Police Monitor and the anti-cop Police Civilian Oversight Board.
Schools we can be proud of:
- Put teachers back in control of their classrooms, principals back in their schools.
- Don’t penalize kids who just want to learn for the price of those who won’t.
- Return school resource police officers to our troubled high schools.
- Link administrator pay to academic results.
- Ban cell phones in the classroom (Why did it take Republican legislature to do it? “Cell phone bans work.”)
- Return honors courses. Learning can be fun but it was never supposed to be easy.
Safe and friendly communities:
DeFund the Police- Approve police body-worn cameras.
- Stop releasing repeat bail jumpers.
- Enforce quality of life issues like vandalism, graffiti, noise.
- Police the most crime-ridden neighborhoods to protect law-abiding residents living there.
- Safely pursue law breakers as police do in Monona.
A civil society that talks to each other:
- Prohibit political demonstrations in residential neighborhoods.
- Protect free speech from the heckler’s veto.
- Discourage name-calling and impugning motives.
- Return the good name of civil rights pioneer Fredric March to the UW campus.
- Promote opportunity for all rather than demanding equal results.
It’s just good government:
- Consolidate services among the county’s 69 units of local government.
- Merge the City of Madison’s (scandal-plagued) Equal Rights Division with Dane County as was done with Public Health.
- Consider reducing the 37-member Dane County Board of Supervisors.
Blaska’s Bottom Line: Don’t mention my name if you want any of this to come to pass.
17 responses to “Wrong guy begins new year with right ideas”
Good luck but don’t expect much.
All in all, a sound agenda. My personal favorite: the social services audit.
There have been a few attempts for a moderate, independent, or centrist party, but they all have gone the way of the dodo bird.
I have my opinions on why this happens.
Dish!
Zzzzzzzzz
This has no chance. No chance whatsoever. Once you admit that, you will see there is another way:
Entertainment and ridicule.
I harken you back to the Pail and shovel party and of course, Bob Kasten school of driving. Your goal will not be to win but to entertain! You might even make the national news. With that in mind, here are my suggestions:
– Party name: White People Suck
– Candidate for Mayor: It will be you but not “David Blaska”. You will legally change your name to:
The Reverend Big Ed Mustafa
– Pet issues: Bringing undocumented immigrant housing to Monroe Street, YES NEW STADIUM, Reparations Now but only from Monroe Streeters, relocating the Chamberlin Rock to the middle of Monroe Street.
The best part is your campaign manager will be Frannie Hong who will finally get the love and respect she so desperately craves. Think about it… you would be Legend (and not just in your own mind this time).
With tons of respect, it could happen, but anybody to the right of progressive Dane should expect to get pummeled with lies, accusations of racism, and non-compassion.
For cripes sakes, did anybody see what Sabrina Madison said on Wednesday? If you call someone racist, or bigoted, or anything else ONLY because of their race then that is, by definition, racist.
Great idea. Maybe give a “Tim Walz” award to someone every month.
“The Golden Tampon Award”
How about “The Reverend Big Daddy Blisterpack”? Obscenely wealthy, morbidly obese, subject of a grand jury probe, double parked in the cone-demarcated loading zone at the MMSD Doyle Administration Building (with the wreckage of a bicycle lodged in the grill of his Ram 350 Crew/Mega Cab pickup truck), lifetime banned from Facebook and NextDoor, giving out warm, red MAGA baseball caps to all the little chillun.
Exceptionally irresponsible suggestions! Thanks. By the powers invested in the great and all-powerful Head Groundskeeper of the magic land of Stately Blaska Manor, Blaska Policy Werkes, and the Experimental Work Farm (and Penal Colony), I hereby award all of you the status of Platinum Subscribers! Be prepared to accept your crocheted headwear (with antlers) and codpieces. Wear them proudly.
Is there any way to wear a codpiece but proudly? (If in doubt, see any portrait of Henry VIII.)
Still fleshing out your character here:
– The Reverend would dress in colorful African garb and claim to be the rightful heir of some African country (make one up) and able to trace his family all the way back to Kunta Kinte. You would refer to Brandi Grayson and Maia Pearson as “your sisters” and liberally use the phrase “My people”.
– You will demand the UW change the name of the Memorial Union to the George Floyd Memorial Union
– You will have a catchphrase. I suggest “Decolonize the Future”
And he would start his own, childless Quality Learing daycare center, with live-streamed drag queen story hour, with ritual burning of a MAGA cap.
Perfect.
RE: The Somewhere Over the Rainbow Agenda
IF ONLY. 🐦🐦 and lemon drops
That was supposed to be bluebirds, not cardinals. I thought AI knew the difference. As the song goes, “If happy little bluebirds fly beyond the rainbow…”
DB you are not alone!
Wrong guy, right message courtesy of Paul Fanlund in the Cap Times. You should invite him to join the White People Suck party.