Interesting contrast to local business climate views. I’ve said a number of times that Wisconsin politicians must make aggressive true broadband (not our current slow dsl/cable services) deployment the priority.
Record Lobbying Spending
Stacy Forster summarizes record Wisconsin special interest spending
Aside from the biennial budget, the so-called taxpayer bill of rights was the most lobbied bill in the session, representing 10,631 hours of lobbying, most of it this year. That was nearly equal to what was spent on the next nine most lobbied bills, according to reports filed with the state Ethics Board.
During the first six months of 2004, special interests spent $11.4 million, or 30% of the $37.8 million.
All City Swim: Results, Photos & Videos
Madison’s All City Swim is underway. The site features results, photos, videos along with a look at past all city events (including those held at B.B. Clarke Beach!).
Epic/Health Care Technology in the News
Jeff Richgels nicely summarizes a recently announced federal electronic medical records initiative and long time, successful Madison Tech (soon to be Verona) firm Epic Systems.
The downside of these sort of deals is that success requires lobbying and dealmaking with many interested (and moneyed) players.
Cartier-Bresson Dies
Henry Allen on Photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson’s death.
Hackworth on Missing Billions in Iraq
Highly decorated retired colonel David Hackworth on a CPA Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) Inspector General Report on 8.8Billion that is MIA:
In Iraq, $8.8 billion is MIA. Serious dough even for the big spenders in Washington, D.C.
A pal in Iraq slipped me a draft Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) Inspector General (IG) report dated July 12, 2004, that blisters the CPA for giving the missing billions to Iraqi ministries without appropriate controls.
US Falling Behind in Broadband Adoption
David Isenberg nicely summarizes our losing approach to “broadband adoption (DSL/Cable Internet access. Keep in mind that residents of Japan and South Korea can purchase internet access with speeds 10 to 30X ours at comparable rates). This is the real economic development issue for Wisconsin.
2004 All City Swim Site
All City Swim, with nearly 2000 participants is being held at Fitchburg’s Seminole Pool later this week (Thursday to Saturday). This year’s event includes some interesting features:
Driving the U.S. – Gasoline Free
Brian Murphy writes:
BARRING A MAJOR METEOR STRIKE, by the time you read this, Australian Shaun Murphy will have completed his eight-month, 16,000-mile circumnavigation of the United States, completely gasoline-free. Murphy is trying to show the world that gasoline, that stuff we?ve loved, wasted and purchased so cheaply for 100 years, is not necessary. To do so, Murphy is crossing the country in a variety of vehicles powered by everything from soybean oil to electricity generated by the methane of cow dung.
Murphy?s rides have so far included just about the whole catalog of wheeled unconventionalism. Electricity?generated through what Murphy calls clean sources like hydro, solar and wind?powers the three-wheeled Corbin Sparrow, the TZero sports car, a converted Volkswagen Beetle, a converted Pontiac Fiero, a few battery-powered motorcycles and one solar-electric canoe (that?s right, a canoe). Biodiesel powers a VW Golf, a near-10-second quarter-mile dragster, two Hummers and the TV crew?s Ford F-650-based motor home. Ethanol produced from corn powers an airplane in which he flew. The ?Human-Powered Car,? meanwhile, has four seats with everyone cranking to make it go. That one didn?t cover much of the 16,000 miles.
Dark Age Ahead?
Jane Jacobs has published Dark Age Ahead (Random House, 2004), in which she targets “five crucial weaknnesses in the foundation of contemporary life in the West” — one of which is “dumbed down taxes.”
Author, activitist, social theorist and renowned urban planner, Jane Jacobs defined an increasingly influential way of looking at cities by opposing “slum” clearance and “suburban sprawl,” and advocating the “restoration” of urban centers. Still in print 40-plus years after publication, her classic The Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961) revolutionized urban planning.
Jacob’s later works explored her fundament ideas for different perspectives: urban economics in The Economy of Cities (1969) and Cities and the Wealth of Nations (1984), and political philosophy in Systems of Survival (1992). More recently Ms. Jacobs argued that economic life obeys the same rules as those governing the systems in nature in The Nature of Economies (2000).
About her latest work, Publisher’s Weekly wrote “Witty, beautifully written–the culmination of Jacobs’ previous thinking, and a step forward that deftly invokes a broader philosophical, even metaphysical, context.” Via Taxprof.