Saturday Opinions
Jack Russell
Russell Jack
It’s never too soon to start making fun of the new guy.
My opinion: Iowa will beat the Badgers. I’m pretty easy on college coaches because their players change all the time and aren’t getting paid. Job one is graduating your players. But job 1 (a) is winning. Brett Bielema is probably a good position coach, but he is over-matched as a head coach. The opposing coach always makes adjustments at half time which are better than the ones Bielema oversees. See if the Badgers are as predictable as I think they are: their first offensive play will be a play-action deep pass.
- Old business: County Supervisor Duane Paulson responds to yesterday’s post:
“You are right, I never thought or said that decreasing the size of the board mean that supervisors would have to much work. My problem all along was representation, going from 10,400 to over 14,000 people. I felt you could no longer just go out and walk the area and talk to people. I said at the time having that many people to represent would bring you the best board money could buy. This was born out when Supervisor Kolb spent $16,000 dollars to get reelected.
I was already on more committee’s or boards that any other Supervisors as published in the Journal Sentinel. I do not serve on finance, and they have the biggest workload.
I have never complained about the work load.
Duane E Paulson”
- Glad I put that disclaimer in at the last minute. My opinion as I gave it to Mr. Paulson: My gut reaction is that a person should not do both because I have a general aversion to the concentration of government in the hands of too few individuals. Other than that, logically and intellectually, I can’t think of a good reason why someone could not do both jobs, provided they had enough time to devote to each. A person certainly can’t get rich doing both jobs, there are few perks, little respect from the general public and the hours are bad. You know what it is? I guess I’d question the judgement of someone who’d want to have both jobs for those reasons. Good luck with your decision.
- New business: The Freeman conducts a Q and A with Waukesha’s new police chief, Russell Jack.
- The owner of Mack’s Custard, which, just from driving by seems to always be doing a decent business, says that Mayor Larry’s and the Freeman’s emphasis on downtown business is the reason he is closing. I find that hard to agree with, but he’s entitled to his opinion.
- My opinion: I wonder if John Meehan (John’s Hot Dogs) would be interested in a west side spot?
- My opinion: Potawatomi makes money hand over fist, yet says it’s not enough. The state or feds ought to do an independent audit and find out where all that money is going and to whom. Somebody’s getting rich and it’s certainly not the employees or gamblers.
- Jessica McBride wonders why Obamagod got a Nobel prize. “Oh, Chicago. Bang, bang.”
- Pete Kennedy on lobsters in Utah or something.
- A guest editorial thinks we should have a Les Paul historical marker. Yawn.
- First item in Thursday’s Police Blotter: Fail
- Saturday Sound Off.
One would hope that Potawatomi Development Corp., the investment arm of the casino business, didn’t invest in CDO’s like the Waukesha School District did. They both have a common thread…beyond Jim Doyle.
It’s a shame that more private sector jobs are being cut and seniors receive no COLA increase yet school tax rates in Waukesha are double digit this year. Educators can expect job security and increased benefits packages thanks to the guardians of the union.
http://milwaukee.bizjournals.com/milwaukee/stories/2005/11/21/focus1.html
I am glad you don’t agree with the owner of Mack’s who blamed Mayor Nelson for its closing. What a ridiculous statement for the owner to make. I like Mac’s, but I very much doubt that the Mayor, or even the Freeman was responsible.
And – what a good suggestion about a west-side John’s – that would be cool!
They went out of business because they took standard custard stand menu items – burgers, fries, hotdogs – off the menu and replaced them with wraps and salads.
Mr Paulson states ‘My problem all along was representation, going from 10,400 to over 14,000 people. I felt you could no longer just go out and walk the area and talk to people’ …
How does he square that with wanting to now run for a position that would require him to represent an additional 4500 constituents? He may say that many of them overlap, but in fact, he’s representing them on a completely different legislative body, considering entirely different legislative initiatives. Either he wants to represent less, so he can give them more ‘individual attention’ or he doesn’t. He seems to want to have it both ways when he seeks to represent more by holding an additional elected office to the one he already holds, and seemed concerned about representing when there were going to be 3500 more constituents to get out and meet.
As for Mr. Kolb’s $16,000 dollar expenditure to get re-elected, I would be curious to know what the collective expenditure of his opponent(s) were in the same election. I would also like to know if other CONTESTED Supervisory races saw the same amount of money spent on average as previous contested races. Without knowing that, its impossible to conclude that one race in which one person spent that much to be re-elected proves anything about how shrinking the board impacted races and campaign spending. My gut feeling is that probably most races saw the same amount of spending that any other CONTESTED County Board Race saw in recent elections prior to the reduction. Kolb is probably the aberration, and quite frankly, probably would have spent just as much had he been contested if the board had not been reduced as well.
What is important to note though, is that through reduction, guys like Kolb actually had to go out there and fight for the position, rather than continuing to run unopposed most terms. The voters got choices, which to me is more important that ensuring old Walter doesn’t have to spend 16k of his money to keep the job. He may have bought the seat, but at least he had to pay for it, instead of it just being handed to him unopposed.
Well said TD!