Category: Wisconsin politics

The latest affront to Democracy during our current affront to democracy is last week’s revelation that the Republican Party is going to run “loyal Republicans” as Democrats against the Democrats running against Republican senators in recall elections.

Three thoughts come to mind. Wisconsin has, remember, an open primary, which means that voters can vote for candidates in whichever party they choose in a primary election, whether it’s for countywide office, the state Legislature, statewide offices, or even president. (It’s not entirely open, however, because a voter can choose candidates in only one party.) The Democratic Party has spent decades trying to kill Wisconsin’s open presidential primary, because, well, the national Democratic Party apparently doesn’t believe in democracy.

You may recall that one year ago Republicans were concerned that, thanks to our open primaries, Democrats would try to throw two primary elections toward Republicans they believed would be easier to defeat in the general election — specifically, gubernatorial candidate Mark Neumann and Seventh Congressional District candidate Dan Mielke. I do not recall any state Democrat claiming that such Democratic voting for less-electable Republicans was a mockery of the electoral process. Gov.  Scott Walker and U.S. Rep. Sean Duffy (R–Ashland) can testify that those efforts, if they existed, did not work. Nor did the Democrats similarly condemn the candidacy of “Republican” Andrew Wisniewski, whose candidacy was created to siphon off enough votes to prevent Democrat-turned-independent Rep. Bob Ziegelbauer of Manitowoc from winning. Rep. Ziegelbauer will tell you that didn’t work either.

There are two reasons why voters should applaud the GOP’s efforts to make Democrats run in primaries. The Democratic Party claims to be the party of diversity, of the racial, ethnic, sexual, living-arrangement and reproductive-rights-freedom kind. (I’m sure I’ve missed some.) The Democratic Party practically invented the concept of hyphenated-Americans. (And yet still insufficient, according to some.)

The Democratic Party, however, is not the party of diversity of the intellectual kind. The Democratic Party has worshiped at the altar (perhaps a bad metaphor since atheists are more likely to be Democrats) of the public employee unions (particularly the teacher unions), private-sector unions, environmentalists, misogynist feminists, the anti-trade movement, the surrender-America — sorry, peace — movement, ad nauseam, for as long as anyone reading this blog will be able to remember.

Wisconsin arguably has not had a pro-business Democrat since Gov. Patrick Lucey in the 1970s. (Lucey signed into law the manufacturing and equipment property tax exemption to benefit business. Wisconsin Democrats would sooner cut off their … well, you supply the answer … than support any kind of business tax break that is not tied to some sort of condition, because the prevailing position of the Democratic Party appears to be that, with the possible exception of “green” businesses, businesses are necessary evils.)

This state is not served well over the long run by unchallenged one-party rule, regardless of which party rules. But the last Democrat to dare to not worship from the same hymnal as the mainstream of the state Democratic Party was  Ziegelbauer, who is now an ex-Democrat after his former party basically threw him out. Wisconsin used to have anti-abortion Democrats; try finding one now.

The state Legislature has 14 Democratic senators and 38 Democratic representatives. Name one who has said in the past year that public-employee unions have too much power in this state. Name one who has said in the past year that this state’s business climate isn’t as good as it should be because of the excessive political power of unions.

The other, and most important, reason is that the recall process against Republican senators is an illegitimate attempt to undo the Nov. 2 election results. Recalls should be reserved for egregious misconduct in public office, including bugging out of the state (this means you, Dave Hansen and Jim Holperin!) and the continuing farce that is Weiner the Weiner. To be lectured to about being deceptive by the party that favors voter fraud (as shown by its opposition to voter ID legislation) is hypocritical, to say the least.

You have to be naïve to not have been able to figure out that voting for Republicans Nov. 2 meant a completely different political direction for the state. Recall that this state had a $2.94 billion deficit — one of the largest as a percentage of the state economy in the entire country — as of the end of the 2009–10 fiscal year, and a structural deficit of $3.6 billion heading into the 2011–13 budget cycle. By numerous measures, state finances were a high-speed train wreck thanks to those the voters fired Nov. 2 and those wise enough to leave office before voters fired them, and their favorite constituent groups listed several paragraphs ago.

Ask your favorite Democrat this: Two years ago, Democrats raised taxes in this state by more than $2 billion. Let’s say that my state senator who voted for this idiocy was a Democrat. Would your favorite Democrat support my Recall Red Fred campaign? Or would the Democrat haughtily proclaim that the people voted for him and therefore I have to wait until the next election to have my say?

Everything in that last paragraph other than Red Fred being my state senator happened. And the voters had their say Nov. 2. And that is burning a metastasizing hole in the souls of all the constituent groups of the Democratic Party. They were in power. They harmed the state. They lost. They deserved to lose. Those who didn’t like losing can run again Nov. 6, 2012.

Instead, those who lost Nov. 2 and their toadies are shoving a great big blue fist in the faces of the voters. In politics, to quote former UCLA football coach Charlie Sanders (and not, as inaccurately claimed, Vince Lombardi), winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing.

The George Mason University Mercatus Center released its 2011 Freedom in the 50 States index.

Wisconsin ranks 25th among the 50 states, two positions better than in 2007. Wisconsin ranks 18th in personal freedom and 31st in economic freedom.

In the Midwest, Wisconsin trails Indiana (fourth), Missouri (sixth) and Iowa (13th), but ranks better than Michigan (27th), Minnesota (34th), Illinois (41st) and Ohio (42nd). New Hampshire tops the list, and New York is at the bottom.

The index ranks the states on economic and personal freedom based on the premise that freedom is grounded “on an individual-rights framework. In our view, individuals should be allowed to dispose of their lives, liberties, and properties as they see fit, as long as they do not infringe on the rights of others.”

That, of course, is contrary to the toxic brew that has been politics in this state for basically all of its history. The Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance’s Why Are Wisconsin’s Taxes High? quotes historian Daniel Elazar as putting Wisconsin into the third of three groups of political cultures among the states — “Moralistic,” which considers government “a positive instrument with a responsibility to promote the general welfare.” Elazar put an interesting mix of nine states in that category — Maine, Vermont, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, North Dakota, Colorado, Utah and Oregon. That is as opposite as you can get from the “Individualistic” model, found in a belt of states almost exactly south of the Moralistic Belt, that “emphasizes the centrality of private concerns” and places “a premium on limiting community intervention.” When the study was written in 2003, seven of the nine Moralistic states ranked in the top 18 states for tax burden, which shows off Wisconsin’s Socialist roots as well.

The study’s rankings are based on fiscal (government spending and taxation) and regulatory (“labor regulation, health-insurance coverage mandates, occupational licensing, eminent domain, the tort system, land-use regulation, and utilities”) policy, as well as a category called “paternalism” that includes home- and private-school regulations as well as measures of personal freedom. Not only is this the only study (according to the authors) of objective measures of economic and personal freedom among the states,  it also recognizes that economic freedom (mostly favored by Republicans) and personal freedom (sometimes favored by Democrats) are inseparable.

First, the relative good news, in personal freedom:

The state has mandatory interdistrict public-school choice and a voucher program. Regulation of private schools, including general curriculum oversight, is light. Homeschools are also regulated with some annoying notification requirements. Wisconsin has very respectable asset-forfeiture laws (over one standard deviation better than average). Like North Dakota, Wisconsin has very high victimless-crime arrest rates (both as a percentage of the population and as a percentage of all arrests). On the other hand, its drug law-enforcement rate is actually below average. Alcohol laws are among the best in the country, with taxes fairly low across the board. Wisconsin does not authorize sobriety checkpoints and, before the data cutoff, was one of three states not to require auto insurance (it has since passed a law). Cigarette taxes are very high, but smoking bans allow numerous exceptions. Wisconsin enacted a domestic-partnership law after the cutoff date for our data.

Law enforcement and the prohibition lobby have been lobbying for sobriety checkpoints (which are blatant violations of the Fourth and Fifth amendments) and more restrictive drunk driving laws, but legislators have so far resisted them. (Wisconsin’s drunk driving problem is the number of drivers with unbelievably large numbers of drunk driving convictions, not the penalties for first-offense drunk driving or the legal definition of intoxication.) The anti-smoking zealots don’t believe the smoking bans are restrictive enough, while those who believe in economic freedom believe that bar owners should be able to decide for themselves whether or not to allow smoking.

Now, the bad news, in economic freedom:

In terms of economic freedom, the state’s spending and debt are roughly average. However, government spending on transportation and public safety are above national norms. The overall tax burden is quite a bit higher than average, as are individual income and property taxes. Eminent-domain-law reform has stalled and could go a lot further. Wisconsin has deregulated cable service but still needs further deregulation in other areas. The state has a prevailing-wage law, but minimum wage is not above the federal level. Occupational licensing is average and there is no community rating for health insurance (there are rate bands for small-group insurers).

I can certainly believe the part about government spending on public safety, given the presence of the waste of tax dollars that is the Town of Ripon Police Department and the Wisconsin State Patrol. The Mercatus Center helpfully points out Wisconsin’s totals in state and local government spending (23.3 percent), taxes (11 percent) and debt (19.8 percent) as a percentage of personal income to prove that the overall tax burden is “quite a bit higher than average.” (Fourth highest, as you know.)

One and a half of the Mercatus Center’s policy recommendations are already getting legislative attention: “Reduce the income-tax burden while cutting back spending in areas above the national average, like education,” and “Broaden the school-choice/school-voucher reforms.” The third area has gotten little attention, but needs attention: “Reform eminent-domain laws,” to prevent unfairly-compensated government land grabs in the name of development. The half is in taxes, because too many people in this state persist in the delusion that more money automatically means better schools.

I can’t tell if Wisconsin is going in the right direction or not. The Walker administration’s defanging of public employee unions is in the courts, tax cuts haven’t taken effect and aren’t large enough anyway, and we don’t have concealed-carry yet. (Concealed-carry is in fact about freedom. You have heard of the Second Amendment, right?) Going from 27th to 25th is not really progress,  but had the Nov. 2 election results been different, we’d be heading toward 50th instead of the correct direction.

A surprising exchange of views took place last week on Charlie Sykes’ show on WTMJ and his Facebook page.

Several Milwaukee conservatives, including WTMJ’s Sykes and Jeff Wagner and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s Patrick McIlheran, are opposed to concealed-carry legislation that is so-called “constitutional carry” — that is, essentially unrestricted concealed-carry, with no training or registering required.

First: With all due respect to Flynn, he disrespected the officers he was supposed to be commending and, more importantly, the people who pay his salary by deviating to condemn the concealed-carry bill he considers too extreme.

Those who oppose concealed-carry — in fact, those who oppose the Second Amendment and firearm rights entirely — are crowing that this means constitutional carry is, well …

Sykes and Wagner call the proposed laws “way too extreme” and say support for these bills comes from the “kook fringe.”

Like all of us, Sykes and Wagner sound just disgusted that our legislature is considering legislation that requires no background checks and no safety training whatsoever.  Heck, you can almost see Wagner throwing his hands in the air, when he says sarcastically, “Let’s let everybody carry guns.”

When right wing radio hosts – who generally support concealed, loaded weapons in public – call pro gun legislation “screwed up,” you know it’s extreme.

“Extreme” is a better description of the anti-gun movement. Their solution to crime is for you to cower in your homes in fear and, if someone breaks into your house or assaults you, try to understand the root causes of their misbehavior while hoping the police show up.

You’ve read about the boycott of some Wisconsin businesses by public-sector unions. Well, two sides can play that game:

Milwaukee “conservative” radio talk show hosts Charlie Sykes and Jeff Wagner think people who support Constitutional Carry are “The kook fringe”

How nice of supposedly “conservative” radio show hosts to give the anti’s talking points.  …

Email the advertising sales manager Tom Sheridan: tsheridan@620wtmj.com and let him know that Wisconsin Carry and the USCCA chose this past week to run our 2-week series of ads on WISN radio instead of WTMJ in part because of comments like Charlie and Jeff’s.

Since when did wanting smaller government and fewer taxes become “Kook fringe?”

Since when did not wanting meaningless permits and registration (its a felony for felons to carry and police, using their radio, can determine in SECONDS during a stop if a person who is carry is legal to do so) become “kook fringe”

Since when did embracing personal accountability VOLUNTARY training and knowing that people either already have or will seek training out of self-preservation (not shooting themselves handling their gun AND staying out of jail because using your gun unlawfully will get you a quick trip to jail) and government training mandates are not effective, become kook fringe?

EVEN the NRA is pushing AGAINST training mandates.  Are their 100,000+ members in Wisconsin the “kook fringe”?

In 2010 the Wisconsin GOP changed their party platform at the state convention to support right to carry concealed WITHOUT a permit. Are they all “kook fringe”

The massive Wisconsin Tea-Party coalition and all of its 100+ independent member groups support constitutional carry. Are they and the 10’s of thousands of law-abiding everyday folks they consist of all “kook fringe”?

It appears there is an out-of-touch “kook fringe” in this story, but its the radio talk show hosts who sit on their perch behind microphones, pretend to be conservatives and talk down to the rest of us.

I would point out as someone with a marketing background that advertising on a radio station that did not carry the aforementioned objectionable opinions may be less than effective, but it is their money.

Flynn’s and Chisholm’s position prove the point I made last week on Facebook that law enforcement is not necessarily a friend of your constitutional rights, particularly law enforcement leadership. Police chief organizations have more often than not come out against concealed-carry, although police officer organizations seem less opposed.

And, to be perfectly blunt, I do not care what Flynn’s or Chisholm’s opinion — or, more bluntly, the opinion of anyone in law enforcement — is about concealed-carry. The Second Amendment and the state Constitution guarantee our rights to own and possess firearms. Period. Police chiefs, sheriffs, district attorneys and judges should have only the same opinion pull that any ordinary citizen has. Their job is to enforce the law, not pontificate on it.

The objections to unrestricted concealed-carry are based, to be equally blunt, on fear. And that is misdirected fear. No gun I have ever seen has loaded itself, pointed itself at a target, and fired. The people that concealed-carry legislation will affect are those who respect the law enough to follow its provisions, and those who respect firearms enough to become familiar with their weapons to the point of practicing enough with them

There has never — never — been a firearms law that has deterred a criminal. The experience of Great Britain, which has banned most firearms for decades (their gun ban is so complete that waivers had to be created for shooting events to take place at the 2012 Olympics), shows that the bad guys simply replace some other lethal weapon they can get for the lethal weapon they can’t get. Pass any law you want; criminals do not care because they are criminals.

James Wigderson has more proof:

Liberal writer Jim Rowen offers a blog post that I think is pretty typical of those who are opposed to legalized concealed carry in this state. Ralph Lang was planning on shooting people at an abortion clinic when a gun he had went off in his hotel room. Rowen wrote,

For gun-crazy legislators trying to make it as easy to carry a concealed weapon in Wisconsin as a wallet, the fortuitous capture of a man admitting his murderous intentions should be a major, major teachable moment.

What is the lesson? That maybe someone at the clinic should consider carrying a gun in case a nut decides to commit an act of violence?

Because if the person was intent on committing homicide, violating the current law against concealed carry of a weapon wasn’t much of a deterrent. Making concealed carry legal would not have affected this case at all, anymore than the current prohibition on concealed carry affected Lang’s decision making.

Interesting, isn’t it, that there is only one constitutional right we have that requires, in some people’s minds, restrictions. The old saw that the First Amendment is not absolute in that you can’t yell “Fire!” in a crowded theater (a reference becoming sadly obsolete in the Internet age) is not correct: You can yell “Fire,” and then you can live with the consequences of your actions by getting firsthand experience in the criminal courts system. There were no requirements that women be trained in how to vote when the 19th Amendment was passed, or for 18- to 20-year-olds when the 26th Amendment was passed.

Rowen and others of his left-wing ilk clearly believe the Second Amendment needs to be removed from the Constitution, as with the similar gun-rights provision in the state Constitution — passed with three-fourths of the voters voting for it, mind you. And if they feel that way, they should try to abolish the Second Amendment, just as the 21st Amendment eliminated the 18th Amendment — passing both houses of Congress and getting 38 state legislatures to pass the amendment. They will not succeed, of course, because they are wrong about gun rights, and most people believe they are wrong about gun rights.

Wisconsin and Illinois are the only states without concealed-carry. The experience of 48 other states shows that legalizing concealed-carry does not create a Wild West environment where people routinely settle arguments with their 9mm pistols, whether or not citizens have to get a concealed-carry permit or whether they have to train before being authorized to carry a concealed weapon. The police have a saying that applies to private citizens too: Better to be judged by 12 than carried by six.

One advantage (really) of my present employment situation is that I’ve been able to go on field trips with all our kids this spring. That included the Ledge View Nature Center in Chilton for Dylan, the Wild Air Play Zone and bowling for Shaena, and, yesterday, the state Capitol in Madison for Michael.

Being from Madison, I’ve been to the Capitol more times than I can remember. Two instances I do remember are visiting as part of my high school political science class (and my teacher is on Facebook), and attending the inauguration of state legislators who had won elections in 1984. (And those who know my political bent would never believe whose campaign I had worked on in the summer and fall of 1984.) Everyone in Madison lives within eyesight of the Capitol. It is smack in the middle of the Isthmus, and it is by city ordinance the tallest building in Madison. I’ve never been to Washington, D.C., but I have to believe that state government looms over Madison — Dane County, in fact — as much proportionally as the federal government looms over Washington. That came to mind when I came upon buildings I didn’t recognize as state office buildings that apparently now are, whether or not the state actually owns the buildings.

Michael’s teacher warned us that getting into the Capitol is now a laborious experience, thanks to the metal detectors now manned by Capitol police and the Wisconsin State Patrol. (For those wondering how police overtime during Protesterama could near $8 million — the equivalent of about 110 state employees’ total yearly compensation — I think I saw the answer Tuesday.) One wonders how much the increased security has to do with credible threats and how much has to do with legislators’ sense of self-importance. And in case of the latter, shame on the majority party in the Capitol.

Speaking of protesters, yes, I saw a few. (I saw a whole bunch of them, apparently fans of former Supreme Court candidate Joanne Kloppenburg, a couple blocks northeast of the Square apparently gathering for some kind of protest.) One person was either protesting or going on his daily walk holding his unreadable (from the Capitol building) neon green sign. Someone claiming to be from AFSCME had a similarly colored shirt announcing his opposition to whatever Gov. Scott Walker is doing now. Another protester carried a sign with the communist-looking fist in the shape of the state of Wisconsin. (Which shows what he thinks of non-liberals, doesn’t it?) Another held up a sign that said “Republicans are WMDs.” (An interesting phrase given what WMDs mean to the anti-Iraq War crowd. For those not fans of the protesters, perhaps it means “We Must Downsize,” say, by 110 state employees.) A woman had a clear umbrella that had cards that claimed that election fraud starts with election officials, perhaps an early arrival for the first protesters mentioned in this paragraph.

(Later Tuesday, the Wisconsin State Journal reported, or tweeted, that a blood drive being held in the Capitol shut down more than three hours early because the daily noontime protest was too loud to ensure confidentiality of donors. What a positive contribution by the protesters Tuesday.)

I wrote on Facebook Monday night that I was going to stop by Gov. Walker’s office and do some protesting myself about Memorial Union parking, the lack of which, for those not on Facebook, caused us to not purchase Babcock Hall ice cream and go to a private-sector ice cream vendor instead. Well, Walker wasn’t in, although we did get to see his press conference room:

Time was when I could look at the state Capitol (even after the Carter administration’s toxic brew of ineptitude, incompetence and malign intent) and marvel about laws being created and the political process taking place. If you’re about my age, you remember …

Then, once I started getting twice-weekly paychecks, I started noticing how much was coming out of my paychecks for taxes, even at $3.35 per hour. Later I noticed that politicians don’t give a damn about you if you’re not one of their people — their voters, their supporters, their contributors, their favored interest groups — and yet they act like they feel your pain. (See Clinton, Bill.) Unfortunately, neither my La Follette political science class (though taught by a great teacher) nor my UW political science major (and, I think, not my wife’s Ripon  College politics and government major either) taught me the ugly reality of politics at any level, which is that politics is a zero-sum game where one side wins (gets power and/or control and/or goodies, from the taxpayers and/or the losers) and the other side(s) loses.

And that is why the older I get, the more libertarian I become. (As H.L. Mencken once said,  “Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.” Or, put more nicely — or maybe not — on Tuesday, “Most of us are not political crack-heads, jonesing for our daily fix of victimhood, partisan spin, overhype, and payback. We prefer to focus on our families, homes, businesses, jobs, neighborhoods, churches, clubs, hobbies, schools, sports teams, meals, clothes, entertainment, charities, and friends.”)

We went to the Senate and Assembly chambers, and my thought was: Too many seats for senators and representatives. (Definitely too much security.) And there are too many suits walking in and out of the Capitol, whether they have offices in the building or not. And there are too many state office buildings because at some point in our state’s history — perhaps May 30, 1848, one day after statehood — the people we vote for decided that government should be an employer, a wealth-redistribution machine, a distributor of carrots and sticks instead of performing essential government services and nothing else.

The afternoon, one day after Memorial Day, was spent at the Wisconsin Veterans Museum, where it is easy for a World War II buff (somehow the term “fan” seems inappropriate) to get lost in the World War II section. One wonders what those who died for their country would think of the country they died for. (Is it unpatriotic to write that?)

I think I’ll skip future state Capitol trips. Unfortunately, the history is overwhelmed by the present-day reality.

Three years ago in Oconto, I met state Sen. Dave Hansen (D–Green Bay), who made a valid point about those of us who believe government spends too much money.

Hansen correctly pointed out that many people advocate that government spend less money without saying what they specifically prefer less government spending.

My proposed budget cut would not only save money, but provide a particular and popular function of government much more efficiently: Eliminate the Wisconsin State Patrol.

The State Patrol is an oddly designed function of state government, because the State Patrol is not a law enforcement agency in the same way that county sheriff’s departments are, or for that matter state police departments in other states. The State Patrol, which is part of the state Department of Transportation, “enforces criminal and traffic laws, conducts criminal highway interdiction programs, and helps local law enforcement agencies with traffic safety, civil disturbances and disasters (natural and man-made).”

In other words, the stormtroopers of the state highways enforce the laws created by the busybodies in Madison and Washington, including mandatory seat-belt laws at a time when any idiot ought to realize they are safer wearing belts than not, to ridiculous levels, such as, in one case I was told by a trusted source, ticketing someone for driving 3 mph — yes, 3 mph — faster than the speed limit. The State Patrol also operates the state’s truck weigh stations, which rarely seem to be open whenever I drive past them.

State troopers (the State Patrol is authorized to have 399 of them) are sworn police officers, but they have no police responsibilities that aren’t related to motor vehicles, and they are legally subordinate to the county sheriff. (Like all bureaucracies, though, the State Patrol is looking to grow itself, having created a K–9 unit for which it had no legislative authorization. And like other bureaucracies, the State Patrol has a public relations arm that distributes news releases and creates pretty-looking reports in which it takes credit for things for which it doesn’t deserve credit, including a drop in traffic crashes.)

The State Patrol might have more of a reason for existence if its jurisdiction were limited to the state’s four-lane highways, the most traveled roads in the state, but that is not now the case. There is no evidence that crime in Wisconsin (particularly crime of a statewide nature) is at such a level as to warrant expanding police powers to the State Patrol, either.

Other than inspecting tractor–trailers and operating the State Patrol Academy, there is nothing the State Patrol does that county sheriff’s departments don’t do, and could do more efficiently with dollars the state currently spends on the State Patrol. That is already occurring in one place, in fact: The State Patrol is really the State-Except-Milwaukee-County Patrol, because the State Patrol has no responsibilities to patrol Milwaukee County freeways, and if they don’t patrol the freeways of the largest metropolitan area in the state, what is their purpose?

The State Patrol has done two things that stood out over the past year: (1) What appeared to be most of them patrolled the roads around the PGA Championship in August, and (2) they provided security at the State Capitol during Protestorama earlier this year. As for the latter, you won’t be surprised to know state troopers are unionized. They should not be, since no government employee should be in a union, and the protests of earlier this year demonstrated why. Moreover, do you really want law enforcement intervening in a political dispute?

Interestingly, I’ve talked to a lot of people about this idea over the past few years — elected officials, political observers, and taxpayers. I’ve yet to have a single person who didn’t have some direct connection to the State Patrol say that this was a bad idea, particularly the part about giving the money the state spends on the State Patrol to county sheriff’s departments. (Perhaps that State Patrol PR arm isn’t working so well after all.)

At this point, I’d like to tell you that the state spends X dollars on the State Patrol. I can’t do that, because the State Patrol’s budget is well hidden within the Department of Transportation budget. I do know that county sheriff’s departments, which are responsible for their own counties instead of the whole state, would spend dollars being used on the State Patrol more wisely. In fact, that already happens in Milwaukee County, which gets $3 million in state funds to patrol Milwaukee County freeways.

Gov.  James Doyle once proposed creating a state police force under the Justice Department, which would have combined the State Patrol, the Justice Department’s Division of Criminal Investigation, and the Department of Administration’s Capitol Police and State Fair Park Police. Such a department perhaps could include the University of Wisconsin police departments on the Madison, Oshkosh, Eau Claire, Milwaukee, Parkside, Platteville, Stout and Whitewater campuses. (I’ll pause while you mull over that bureaucratic snarl.)

That is one of those ideas that seems good in theory until you consider one fact: That statewide police department would be run by the Attorney General. Doyle, who was elected attorney general in 1990, and his one-term successor Peg Lautenschlager grossly politicized the Justice Department as Democrats seem to want to do. The history of Democrat Kathleen Falk, a former associate attorney general and public intervenor (the taxpayer-funded anti-development bottleneck that no longer exists), indicates that that would have continued had Falk not (fortunately) lost to Republican J.B. Van Hollen in 2006. (Unfortunately, though that position doesn’t exist, there is an assistant attorney general whose job is to harass businesses over picayune environmental law disputes. That person’s name? Joanne Kloppenburg.) Doyle and Lautenschlager did nothing to assist actual working law enforcement, but did wander off into areas that, whether or not you agree with their positions, were not about law enforcement.

Those who are not conservatives should be concerned as well about law enforcement being run by elected officials. (Am I saying sheriffs shouldn’t be elected either? That’s a valid argument, in fact; at a minimum, sheriff positions should not be partisan offices. Enforcing the law should not depend on whether the chief law enforcement officer is a Democrat or a Republican.) We all know that elected officials pander to voters. That reality makes one wonder if the law can be enforced fairly and effectively by someone who does what politicians do to keep their offices.

It is one thing to have a statewide investigative force for crimes of a statewide or specialized nature. (The Division of Criminal Investigation could be said to serve as Wisconsin’s FBI right down to the “special agent” position names.) That is not what the State Patrol does. Either the State Patrol should have its responsibilities expanded, or it should be disbanded. In an era of state budget crises that are bigger than widely believed but not rampant statewide crime, the latter is the preferred route.