If WI GOP Assembly Speaker Robin
Vos is serious about passing budgets without anyone being "held hostage" - - though his track record suggests he has been more the perpetrator of punitive legislating than the victim - - he would root out, name names and banish the anonymous budget drafting/amending that has infected the current process and its predictable, toxic consequences.
Madison Mayor Paul Soglin is rightly outraged that one of these freshly-discovered, sponsor-free, anonymous budget amendments - - and wouldn't you know it's yet another attack on local decision-making - - discourages and could prevent municipalities from building or finishing valuable bike trails and sidewalks.
So GOP budget-writing legislators - - elected officials - - want kids to walk to school in the street, and also hope to set up more bike-motorist conflict in traffic lanes?
That's partisan stupidity gone mad - - so of course this would be handled anonymously by author and leader with no legislator saying, 'Hey, put my name on that.'
This same contemptible and corrupting no-name, no-hearing, no-explanation legislating is also the way someone slipped right past Joint Finance Committee co-chair and cheerleader for fake transparency Alberta Darling an amendment to devalue existing teaching training and certification by allowing an online alternative.
Though I'm surprised that whichever GOP State Rep. or Senator from Bashteachersville who committed this legislative breaking-and-entering wouldn't want to be named come election time for first-in-line position at the the far right's ideological ATM.
This in-the-dark budget writing orchestrated by anonymous donors or lobbyists distorts public policy by manipulating taxpayer spending to reward clandestine special interest.
It's wrong, immoral and anti-democratic, but if legislative leaders in our degraded, one-party GOP-led state are going to tolerate and benefit from it - - and, for all we know, stage-manage it as you'd expect leaders to do to earn their their privileges, titles, super offices and salary bumps - - then it's the people who are being held hostage by what I said yesterday was Soviet style governance.
Madison Mayor Paul Soglin is rightly outraged that one of these freshly-discovered, sponsor-free, anonymous budget amendments - - and wouldn't you know it's yet another attack on local decision-making - - discourages and could prevent municipalities from building or finishing valuable bike trails and sidewalks.
So GOP budget-writing legislators - - elected officials - - want kids to walk to school in the street, and also hope to set up more bike-motorist conflict in traffic lanes?
That's partisan stupidity gone mad - - so of course this would be handled anonymously by author and leader with no legislator saying, 'Hey, put my name on that.'
This same contemptible and corrupting no-name, no-hearing, no-explanation legislating is also the way someone slipped right past Joint Finance Committee co-chair and cheerleader for fake transparency Alberta Darling an amendment to devalue existing teaching training and certification by allowing an online alternative.
Though I'm surprised that whichever GOP State Rep. or Senator from Bashteachersville who committed this legislative breaking-and-entering wouldn't want to be named come election time for first-in-line position at the the far right's ideological ATM.
This in-the-dark budget writing orchestrated by anonymous donors or lobbyists distorts public policy by manipulating taxpayer spending to reward clandestine special interest.
It's wrong, immoral and anti-democratic, but if legislative leaders in our degraded, one-party GOP-led state are going to tolerate and benefit from it - - and, for all we know, stage-manage it as you'd expect leaders to do to earn their their privileges, titles, super offices and salary bumps - - then it's the people who are being held hostage by what I said yesterday was Soviet style governance.