The definition of madness

… is expecting different results.

We have been approached by neighbors here in Madison WI — this time not with a cease and desist order. They’re seeking advice, strategies, or black helicopter ops in the cause of reversing the referenda authorizing our schools to blow by state spending limits by an additional $607 million.

Best we can counsel is: quit voting for progressives. School board put the referenda on the 2024 Fall ballot; you voted for the resulting average 11.2% hike in property taxes and for all seven members. As with Jacob Marley, these are the chains you forged in life. Bend over for more. The two incumbents seeking re-election and their two challengers address themselves exclusively to this or that supposedly under-served demographic in the ever-expanding, progressive taxonomy of victimhood. Nowhere on their pull-down wall chart is listed that forgotten genus: Taxpayer, forgotaboutus. 

Here’s a start. Mizz Chris Taylor wants to wear black robes on the state supreme court. She is endorsed by the teachers union and by the local AFL-CIO, of which Madison Teachers Inc. is a member. Both unions fought for the higher taxes. They always do. If you want more of the same, elect Chris Taylor to the bench April 7 so she can overturn Act 10 (estimated to have saved taxpayers $35.6 million statewide last year), then stand back when government employees attack the feed trough like lumberjacks the day after Lent.

Feel the warmth

Comrade John Nichols, Francesca Hong, A.O.C., and international socialism are maintaining radio silence over the most predictable event of this young year: NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s first budget — $127 billion, bigger than the State of Florida’s. Calls for jacking up property taxes by 9.5% in one of the world’s most expensive cities.  

NYC teachers union endorsed Zohran Mamdani. Now he’s raiding their pension fund. And cutting the police budget. Remember that when The Capital Times urges voters to keep electing the UniParty.

Our paranoid President 

You can’t use emergency powers to impose taxes. If you have to explain this you’re wasting your time. — Ian C. Jordan

The commander in chief who blames unlikely soulmates Robin Vos and Nancy Pelosi for losing the 2020 election now suspects foreign influence on the U.S. Supreme Court. (Always thought Neil Gorsuch looked a little Canadian! Make him say “about.”) How else to explain its 6 to 3 rejection of his unilateral imposition of tariffs — their rates more changeable than Taylor Swift’s concert costumes! 

Listen to the successor to Dwight Eisenhower and Ronald Reagan after the Supreme Court ruled against him 6 to 3: “A disgrace to our nation. … [The justices are] very unpatriotic and disloyal to our Constitution … the Court has been swayed by foreign interests … an embarrassment to their families.”

This is ugly even by Mr. Trump’s standards.… He’s accusing [justices] of betraying the U.S. at the behest of nefarious interests he didn’t identify, no doubt because they don’t exist. … President Trump owes the Supreme Court an apology — to the individual Justices he smeared on Friday and the institution itself. … This is rhetoric that could cause some deranged Trump acolyte to turn to violence against a Justice. — The Wall Street Journal

→ The Supreme Court’s tariff ruling shows conservativism at work.

Blaska’s Bottom Line: We may be RINOs but at least we are conservative. We remember when Republicans cherished the Constitution. The document cares not a whit about this policy or that program. It’s a contract that specifies how a thing gets done and who can or cannot do them — all in the cause of preventing despotism.

Did you support Biden’s executive order canceling student debt?