A rather illuminating chart from Defense & the National Interest. PDF Version.
Did you know that we are spending as much on defense as we did during the height of the Cold War? Yet many of our military leaders tell us they don’t have enough money and that we need to buy more modern and expensive weapons to assure our national security.
Time to rethink…
Data compiled by the District of Columbia. Milwaukee is 8th (I wonder where Madison would fall?).
There is an enormous difference between Jim Doyle, the candidate for Governor in 2002, and Jim Doyle, the Governor. As a candidate, no one spoke more forcefully or more often about the need to restore integrity to Wisconsin’s state government through campaign finance reform. As governor, no one has put more distance between his campaign rhetoric and his actual performance on this issue.
“I was sort of disappointed after the election because my friends in Wisconsin had their spirits down,” Bush campaign manager Karl Rove said Saturday night. “You seem to think you came up short, and you did in the Electoral College. But without your effort here, we wouldn’t have won. You don’t fight someone just in one place, you fight them all along the line and make them spread their resources. You scared the heck out of [Kerry].”
In front of a GOP-packed audience at the Waukesha County Lincoln Day Dinner, the former top Bush campaign manager and current White House deputy chief of staff spoke candidly about the campaign, his relationship to President Bush, and his pride in the people of Waukesha County.
Spivak & Bice harvest email from a dental claims provider:
“It’s clear to me that (Jim) Doyle is going to win. . . . McCallum is a stiff,” wrote Borca, the multimillionaire founder of a slew of Milwaukee-area companies. “I’m having dinner at a friend’s house tonight (Jack Goodsitt) who is a good buddy of Doyle . . . there will only be four of us, and he set it up so I could get to talk with Doyle.
“I’m giving Doyle ten grand with the same understanding of our personal meeting about Medicaid. . . . I hate giving money to a democrat, but we sent 50 grand to NJ, and will now win the dental carve-out. I’m hoping you will help offset my Doyle expense to the tune of 2 grand . . . if you don’t want to, I’m still going to do it, as I did mccallum . . . let me know.”
Doyle has raised more money at a faster rate than former Governor Tommy Thompson.
Dave Cieslewicz is hosting a fundraiser on 4.21.2005 @ the Overture Center starting at 5:30p.m. More info. Dave’s ongoing campaign website.
The Department of Homeland Security’s privacy board chose as its chairman Paul Rosenzweig, a conservative lawyer best known in technology circles for his defense of the Pentagon’s Total Information Awareness project. Bowing to privacy concerns, Congress pulled the plug on the program two years ago.
Nuala O’Connor Kelly, the department’s chief privacy officer, nominated Rosenzweig for the job during the group’s first meeting in a downtown hotel here. Rosenzweig is a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation and a former Justice Department trial attorney.
Finally, Thompson voiced his regret just one day after Medicare’s trustees announced that the drug benefit by itself has an unfunded liability 60 percent larger than that of the entire Social Security program. (The unfunded liability for all of Medicare is nearly six times that of Social Security.) Medicare’s financial outlook has grown so dire that its two public trustees broke with the trustees who are members of Bush’s Cabinet to say that it is in far worse shape that Social Security.
The Dane County Clerk’s website includes election results from races around the county. Wispolitics has statewide results here.
U.S. Sen. Russ Feingold, whose name has become synonymous with campaign finance reform, is raising both his profile and thousands of dollars with his new leadership political action committee.
Feingold, D-Wis., is using the PAC to fund political travel, like his high-profile trip to Alabama last week, and to make contributions to fellow Democrats as he tries to help the party regain the Senate next year.