Daniel Cody - “Left on the Lake”

One of Sen. McCain’s advisors, former HP CEO Carly Fiorina, gets called out for her creative use of math regarding the impact her candidates tax cut plan would have on small businesses.

This morning at a Christian Science Monitor breakfast Carly Fiorina made the case that Obama’s proposed tax hike on those who make more than $250,000 a year would be damaging to small businesses…

Okay, let’s assume there are now 23 million small businesses in the U.S. today (the latest stats I could find were 21.5 million “schedule C” class businesses in 2005). There’s no way that all 23 million of those are netting more than $250,000. In fact, 94.5% of all “flow-through” entities (self-employed folks, which generally tend to be small businesses, though Tiger Woods also falls into this category) had receipts under $100,000 in 2007. - Time.com

Those of us in the technology field may recall that Carly Fiornia ran one of the most well respected and successful technology companies into the ground during her tenure as CEO, so this may come as no surprise to some that she’s now an economic advisor for the McCain campaign.

The Chicago Tribune had an interesting piece I missed last week about how the pressure for extending a commuter rail line from Kenosha to Milwaukee is building from employees and employers alike.

Time for Chicago-Milwaukee commuter line has come, employees, companies say

Chip Brewer, director of worldwide government relations for S.C. Johnson, has said the company cannot always draw top job candidates because Racine is not connected to Chicago or Milwaukee the way communities are in New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco or Boston. He said younger employees want mobility.

“When we recruit people, we would love them to want to live and work and raise families in Racine. And many employees and executives do that,” Brewer said. “Many times you have two wage earners, and for family reasons, or employment reasons, they choose to live elsewhere.” - Chicago Tribune

An excellent example of something I’ve been saying for years now: Younger educated professionals, like myself and my wife, take mass transit into account when considering where to move and raise their families.

In order to draw those people to Milwaukee and Southeastern Wisconsin, we need to be able to compete with cities like St. Louis, Seattle, Denver, and everywhere out East that are light years of ahead of us in terms of mass transit options.

Completing the Kenosha-Racine-Milwaukee commuter rail line would be a step in the right direction, and not just from the perspective of those in Milwaukee.

Light posting over the weekend.

Today I learned from right-wing talk show programs that if 13 year old kids can’t hop into a high-tech simulator to practice killing people at a family orientated festival, you should boycott that festival.

I say good for Summerfest. This isn’t about “supporting the troops” - which interestingly enough only comes from the right when they’re supporting stuff like this, not things like GI Bills and Veterans health care - the “game” would be inappropriate despite who was running it at an event like Summerfest which has enough problems as it is attracting families.

I had the opportunity to visit St. Louis this past weekend for my brothers wedding reception, and just like in recent trips to cities across the Country like Seattle and San Diego, I was impressed with the level of mass transit options the region offered.

St. Louis’s Metrolink is another great example of a mass transit system that is seeing a huge increase in it’s ridership numbers. It’s ridership numbers from April (the most recent month for which there is data) are the highest in recent history.

It’s bus ridership in April was up 12% and it’s commuter rail line ridership was up 13% in April. Over 2.3 million boardings took place on the commuter rail system in April alone.

I think it’s a safe bet to assume that the increased ridership St. Louis saw on the Metrolink will only increase as gas prices continued to rise through May and June.

As promised, here is the text of the referendum the Milwaukee County Board of Supervisors voted to approve last week:

Shall the State of Wisconsin grant Milwaukee County the authority to provide property tax relief of at least sixty-five million dollars ($65 million) by levying a one percent (1%) county sales and use tax to be used to removed the following three items from the property tax levy: parks recreation culture, transit and emergency medical services (EMS)?
YES
NO

Two developments since last week: County Executive Scott Walker has unsurprisingly said he’ll veto the measure, and County Supervisor Theo Libscomb has indicated his support for the measure. Sup. Libscomb’s support should give the County Board the votes they need to override Walker’s veto and let the people of Milwaukee County decide once and for all on this issue.

Ken Mobile has some relevant thoughts about our Supervisor, Lynne DeBruin, and her changing excuses over the past few years to block this initiative.

We’ll see whether she chooses to side with Scott Walker again, or if she’s got another excuse to block the people of Milwaukee County having their say when the override vote comes up in July.

Semi-good news out of today’s Milwaukee County Board of Supervisors meeting; the Board passed a resolution that would put a referendum question on this Novembers ballot asking the residents of Milwaukee County whether or not they would support a 1% sales tax to replace the property tax levy for parks, transit and EMS services.

I say semi-good news because it passed by a vote of 12-6, which means there aren’t enough “yes” votes at this time to overturn what is assuredly going to be a Scott Walker veto of the resolution. However, one of the new Supervisors, Theo Libscomb, was absent today. How he’d vote is anyone’s guess, but I’d have to assume he’d go with Walker on this one, which leaves the Board one vote shy from overturning the veto.

More later including the actual text of the referendum as it would appear on the ballot this November, and some thoughts about my own Supervisor’s continued obstruction of simply letting the voters have their say on this issue once and for all.

I was enjoying some big band music this evening at “Tosa Tonight” in Hart Park when I was surprised to see County Supervisor Jim “Luigi” Schmitt announce himself and ask for my signature on nomination papers for his bid to become the next Milwaukee County Clerk.

I knew that the former Clerk, Mark Ryan, had announced he was retiring recently, but I was a bit surprised to hear that Sup. Schmitt was running for the job a mere two months after winning re-election for County Supervisor in the 19th district which represents Wauwatosa.

When I asked him who was running to fill his seat should he win the office of County Clerk, he jokingly replied, as is his manner, that he didn’t care.

I’m not aware at this time of any other candidates running for the office and would have to say that his name ID across the County puts him at the top of an as yet unknown list of candidates in the November election.

It will be interesting to see how his campaign for a County wide office will influence his voting between now and November, especially on issues like the County wide sales tax increase that he’ll be voting on tomorrow.

While the district he’s represented in Wauwatosa as Supervisor is one of the more conservative in the County, and hence most friendly to his mostly conservative record, it will be interesting to see how that record plays out in a County wide race.

It’s hard to believe it’s been over a year since former Alderman Mike McGee was arrested on charges of bribery.

He was found guilty last night and will certainly go to prison for a maximum of 30 years, but probably more like 3-5. Then he’s got an entire state trial to deal with which hasn’t even begun yet and could add a serious amount of time to that sentence.

While I don’t have any specific comments on the trial or McGee himself, I think it’s important to close this ugly and disturbing chapter in Milwaukee’s history.

One has to wonder who the Wisconsin right-wing will use in his place though when they want to bash the African American community here in Milwaukee. McGee had been a convenient figurehead for them to use in recent history whenever they wanted to parrot the “Milwaukee thug” meme.

At any rate, guilty by a jury of his peers who found it hard to ignore the overwhelming evidence against McGee. Good riddance.

Amtrak usage between Milwaukee and Chicago is up over 24% over a year ago.

Amtrak says its passenger train service between Milwaukee and Chicago continues to set ridership records.

For the first five months of the year, the seven daily Hiawatha Service round trips carried more than 281,000 passengers. Amtrak says that’s a 24 percent increase over last year. Chicago Tribune

I can hear the counter argument already… “Maybe Milwaukee’s use of fixed rail is up, but Milwaukee’s situation is different than the one here in …. Milwaukee”.

Imagine if we had a commuter rail line between the two cities like the proposed KRM route between Milwaukee and Chicago?

Check out the synopsis from a segment of this morning’s Jay Weber show. For the 99.983% of people who have no idea who that is, he’s the morning drive right-wing talker on WISN 1130. In short, a less entertaining, more narcissistic version of Rush Limbaugh.

“Milwaukee’s hand-out crowd storms the welfare office for freebies.”

This is not only classless, but heartless, cruel, and disturbing on several levels to anyone with a conscience.

Mocking those unfortunate ones who don’t have enough to eat, or are looking to feed their children, as looking for “hand-outs” or “freebies” is sick.

The double irony here is that this comes from a person who spends hours a day talking about how Sen. Obama is “out of touch” or “elitist!” with regular Americans.

News flash to conservatives like Mr. Weber: Millions of “regular” Americans go to bed hungry every night. When they fall on tough times, they’ll do anything they need to feed their families. That includes weighing the shame and powerlessness that can come with relying on someone others against the basic human instinct to feed and care for your children.

I know, because I’ve personally been in that line in my life. We were never there for “hand-outs” or “freebies” or anything so trite as Mr. Weber tries to make it out to be. We were there because we needed some help to make it through the week.

So unless you’ve been there yourself, you have no right to judge those who are.