Haas414

Straight from the Milwaukee Drinking Liberally blog: Hello! We are excited to report that Mike Tate, chair of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, will be our guest host at next Wednesday’s Drinking Liberally! That’s on October 20, just under two weeks before the general election. I know we’re anxious about that, so come find out what Mike has to say about getting us through to the other side with victory by our candidates! According to the ever-reliable Wikipedia, “Tate served as the Deputy State Director of America Coming Together in 2004. He was hired as the State Director of Dean…

Benoît Mandelbrot (1924-2010) was a mathematician who unleashed the curious (and truly mind-altering) possibilities of fractal geometry. While I’m certainly not a mathematician, you don’t have to be to appreciate the possibilities of what Professor Mandelbrot brought to our world. Fractals are visible everywhere, from snowflakes to broccoli to maple leaves. It’s a subtle beauty of the universe that once you know to look for, you see everywhere. [There’s a computer-generated picture of a Mandelbrot set here… trust me!] While you don’t see Mandelbrot sets such as the one above every day, you can see fractals in virtually everything. Dr.…

I find no joy in the possibility of the Milwaukee County government being forced to declare bankruptcy. That’s the prediction of a “super-secret report” by the Greater Milwaukee Committee that somehow was not so secret that an executive summary got into Dan Bice’s hands. It’s a testament to the effects of the old school politicking that led to the pension scandal as much as it is to the ineffectuality of the current county administrator. And even if it does point to that, I see no reason to gloat or say “told you so.” It’s a dire problem that we need…

“My question on Ron Johnson’s company using prison labor: Hiring after release?” A sad fact of America’s sprawling prison-industrial complex is that upon release, many former prisoners do not have work skills, to say nothing of the stigma that comes with a criminal record. And by now–the news has been out for at least fifteen minutes now–it’s old news that, quoting the AP story, “Pacur Inc. and Dynamic Drinkware LLC, two companies run by Johnson, employ up to nine inmates at a time through a state Corrections Department jobs program.” I’m fine with that. They get to let the state…

“Donate to Ron Johnson’s money bomb TODAY and watch the scales tip back to the people!” declares Real Debate Wisconsin. I find that statement rather ironic, not just that it comes from that site, but that there’s the impression that electing Johnson in lieu of Senator Feingold will in any way return the seat to “the people.” To review, Ron Johnson is hardly a man of the people. He’s not a self-made man, unless you call marrying into money a way to remake yourself in such a way. Moreover, because he married into money, he could use the power and…

According to a story in the Journal Sentinel this week, the Milwaukee County Transit System was awarded “nearly $8.3 million Monday to  to buy new buses and renovate bus garages.” That’s on top of the stimulus cash and will ensure much-needed repairs to the facilities can occur. (That’s another effect of deferred maintenance that we haven’t heard much about, probably because it didn’t kill anyone.) Sometimes, you need to look for help from the outside, especially when the deck’s stacked against you from the inside. What’s huge, given that, is that we have gotten new, clean buses for the first…

Some time ago, perhaps when my parents were children, it was fairly common for the father to head off to work in the morning while the mother would stay at home with the children. From what I understand, it’s not uncommon nowadays for this to repeat, albeit with one change: It’s the father who stays home while the mother goes to work. And for us, that’s the case. My wife, Stacie, is an attorney, and she trekked off to her new job today, leaving me in charge of young Ellison. As I type this, he’s resting on his play mat,…

If you feel old when you remember hearing about the fall of Berlin Wall twenty-one years ago, or that East Germany and West Germany got back together a year after that, consider this: Germany has paid off all of its post-war debts. That includes all that it was obliged to pay to France and Belgium by the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, and the debt owed to foreign institutions by the Weimar Republic. In simpler terms, ninety-two years after the end of World War I, and twenty years after reunification, all of Germany’s debts have been paid off. The…

Every once in a while, I get a hunch. 9 times out of 10, they prove true. Sometimes they’re important, such as my prediction that a large SUV would hit my little Honda, but I’d live. I didn’t say that I always listened to them (why didn’t I drive the Eagle Vision that night? (Because it had an automatic transmission, which is much less interesting or fun to drive)), but even so, they usually come true. The latest: the Republicans will not execute a whole takeover of Government this fall. By that, I mean that I think they will not…