Citizens of the Dane County area gathered at the Senior Center in Madison Saturday morning as U.S. Rep. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wisconsin, and Congressman Rush Holt, D-New Jersey, discussed the Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act of 2005.
?[Promotion of voter security is] personal and something that I feel very strongly about,? Baldwin said.
Lots of Soccer at Reddan This Weekend
Teams from Chicago, Milwaukee, Madison, Minneapolis and in between participated in this weekend’s spring soccer tournament at Reddan.
McDonald’s Turns 50
The fast-food franchise has now been around for half a century, and has 30,000 outlets. The original store in Illinois sold burgers for 15 cents. The company says it now serves 50 million people a day.
One must also listen to Marc Knopfler’s “Boom Like That”, which quotes McDonald’s founder Ray Kroc extensively. And, read – Fast Food Nation.
Nice move, GM – audio in on new 2006 cars
This benefit – the ability to plug your iPod or other portable audio device, into a car stereo seems trivial. Unfortunately, it’s a rarity. GM deserves credit for opening up – that is, allowing any audio device to plug into their car systems…..
Ralph Reed’s Casino Lobbying
David Kirkpatrick & Philip Shenon take a fascinating look at former Christian Coalition head, current lobbyist and lietenant governor (Georgia) candidate Ralph Reed:
In Washington, federal investigations of Mr. Abramoff, a close ally of Tom DeLay, the House majority leader, have revealed that Mr. Abramoff paid Mr. Reed’s consulting firm more than $4 million to help organize Christian opposition to Indian casinos in Texas and Louisiana – money that came from other Indians with rival casinos.
Mr. Reed declined to comment for this article; he has said publicly that he did not know that casino owners were paying for his services and that he has never deviated from his moral opposition to gambling. But the episode is a new blemish on the boyish face that once personified the rise of evangelical Christians to political power in America.
The Economist: The Flat Tax Revolution
The Economist provides several useful tax simplification pointers. I wonder if I’ll live to see the day that we have a rational, sensible tax system…
The United States, which last simplified its tax code in 1986, and which spent the next two decades feverishly unsimplifying it, may soon be coming to a point of renewed fiscal catharsis. Other rich countries, with a tolerance for tax-code sclerosis even greater than America’s, may not be so far behind. Revenue must be raised, of course. But is there no realistic alternative to tax codes which, as they discharge that sad but necessary function, squander resources on an epic scale and grind the spirit of the helpless taxpayer as well?
Verizon CEO – Muni Wireless a “Dumb Idea”
Todd Wallack visits with Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg:
The head of the country’s largest phone company ridiculed San Francisco’s interest in building a municipal Wi-Fi network that is designed to offer cheap or free Internet service throughout the city.
“That could be one of the dumbest ideas I’ve ever heard,” said Ivan Seidenberg, chief executive officer of Verizon Communications, during a meeting with Chronicle editors and writers on Friday. “It sounds like a good thing, but the trouble is someone will have to design it, someone will have to upgrade it, someone will have to maintain it and someone will have to run it.”
I might agree with Seidenberg IF the incumbent telco’s provided true broadband, which they don’t (we’re stuck at very slow, costly speeds compared with Japan & Korea).
Paradox: WSJ: Skilled Labor Shortage: Milwaukee Journal: State Short on Jobs for Graduates
Jason Stein writes in the Wisconsin State Journal that there’s a skilled labor shortage here:
Colleges and training programs aren’t keeping up with the demand for skilled workers in a variety of industries, the Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development has found. Rough state projections show Wisconsin needs 2,430 registered nurses to enter the work force each year until 2012. But in 2004, only 1,755 nursing graduates took the state exam to become registered nurses.
Wisconsin’s construction industry needs a projected 1,020 new carpenters a year, but only 340 carpentry graduates are coming out of the state’s apprenticeship and tech college programs.
Meanwhile, Joel Dresang writes in the Milwuakee Journal-Sentinel that we don’t have enough jobs for graduates.
“In many cases, the jobs aren’t here,” says Karen Stauffacher, assistant dean and director of the Business Career Center at UW-Madison.
As of last week, more than a third of the job offers accepted by the business school’s spring graduates were with companies based in Minneapolis (18% of the accepted offers) and Chicago (17%).
Only 31% of accepted offers were from Wisconsin employers, mostly in Madison (13%) and Milwaukee (8%). On average, the Chicago employers offered salaries $10,000 higher than in Madison, and Minneapolis companies offered about $7,000 more.
The Legacy of Jules Verne
Jules Verne died 100 years ago this spring. We’ll talk about his legacy to literature and science, and take a look at two research projects he might have appreciated: drilling to the center of the Earth and finding the right place to live on the Moon.
audio
PDF Copies of President Bush & VP Cheney’s Tax Returns
From Taxprof.