Property Owners Burden Rising

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Peter Whoriskey:

“What is all the money going for?” the 60-year-old translator wondered last week. “I’m not seeing it in better services. Homeowners are becoming cash cows.”

The spectacular boom in Washington area real estate prices over the last five years has been accompanied by staggering increases in home tax bills as many local governments have spurned significant tax cuts in favor of reaping billions more from homeowners.

Judging by the number of “Madison Property Taxes” inbound searches recently, this is a topic on many local homeowner’s minds.

People Who Make Our World Work

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Flying around these days can be a real hassle. Periodically, though, one has the opportunity to choose the road not taken. In this case, rather than using a rental car, I chose a 4:15a.m. shuttle from Santa Fe to the Albuquerque Sunport.

These conversations make up for all the hassles.

The tale begins in 1881, when a Barcelona native stopped in Santa Fe on his way to settle in Colorado’s San Juan Valley. Locals told him about something called a homestead opportunity. Finding the scenery and people of Santa Fe agreeable, he never completed the journey north to Colorado.

“Very smart, but not educated“, the immigrant settled and built a business in his garden. Growing and selling jalapenos, carrots (“this big!”), corn, peppers and more, he married and raised five sons. The boys carried water to the garden from a nearby river seven (7!) times per day. Buyers quickly snapped up his two annual vegetable crops.

One of his sons (the shuttle driver) served our country in the marines from 1949 to 1969, starting at Camp Pendleton, moving to El Toro, Korea, Vietnam and Okinawa, becoming a DI (Sargeant). He served in Korea in 1950 and Vietnam from 1960 to 1965. It was “hell”. “I have nine lives”. A traveller asked what was the favorite part of his military service, “there must be one”: “Furlough – getting out of hell, I could see my family”.

Today, this 75 year old veteran spends his time driving a few shuttles each day from Santa Fe to Albquerque’s Sunport, fly fishing (catch & release) near Taos, making an annual visit to relatives in Spain and checking up on his daughter and grandchildren.

As I left the early morning shuttle, he proudly mentioned that he starts the day with 100 pushups and shows off to younger guys by doing 25 one arm pullups.

Gladwell: The Ketchup Conundrum

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Malcolm Gladwell:

Many years ago, one mustard dominated the supermarket shelves: French’s. It came in a plastic bottle. People used it on hot dogs and bologna. It was a yellow mustard, made from ground white mustard seed with turmeric and vinegar, which gave it a mild, slightly metallic taste. If you looked hard in the grocery store, you might find something in the specialty-foods section called Grey Poupon, which was Dijon mustard, made from the more pungent brown mustard seed. In the early seventies, Grey Poupon was no more than a hundred-thousand-dollar-a-year business. Few people knew what it was or how it tasted, or had any particular desire for an alternative to French’s or the runner-up, Gulden’s. Then one day the Heublein Company, which owned Grey Poupon, discovered something remarkable: if you gave people a mustard taste test, a significant number had only to try Grey Poupon once to switch from yellow mustard. In the food world that almost never happens; even among the most successful food brands, only about one in a hundred have that kind of conversion rate. Grey Poupon was magic.

Karl Rove visits Waukesha

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Joe Ahlers:

“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.

Money, Politics, Medicaid & Jim Doyle

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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.

Where the Innovators Are

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Laura Rich:

As James Surowiecki writes in the April 11, 2005 issue of The New Yorker, innovation has fallen almost entirely upon the shoulders of small businesses; big companies can’t manage it anymore. They’re still spending money on research and development, but those budgets have shrunk dramatically in most cases, and many are outsourcing R&D or forming R&D alliances with other big companies.
Surowiecki focuses on the decline of an innovation culture at Sony, which hasn’t really been able to corner any market since the Walkman. While some may bemoan the disintegration of innovation out of such giants, it’s really not so sad. New ideas that come from smaller businesses are often more exciting and groundbreaking (just look at many of the ideas that come from the Inc. 500), and, as small businesses make up three-quarters of all businesses, perhaps even more essential to the health of the economy.

Yet another reason why our politicians need to pull their head out and make true high speed networks a reality in Wisconsin…