Blogging Blue

So according to campaign finance reports, Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett has raised more than $1 million and has more than $600,000 in the bank. According to the article, Mayor Barrett’s campaign has also released some results of a poll conducted earlier this year that shows Mayor Barrett with a 66% favorability rating and 71% of respondents saying Barrett is doing a good job. With just over four months until the official nomination period begins, it’ll be interesting to see if any serious contenders to Mayor Barrett emerge. No doubt some folks are going to be scared off by his fundraising totals, but I’d be willing to venture a guess that there’ll still be no shortage of candidates seeking to knock Mayor Barrett out of office.

Any list of potential contenders to Mayor Barrett has to start with everyone’s favorite Milwaukee County Sheriff, “Democrat” David Clarke. I use the term “Democrat” loosely when it comes to Sheriff Clarke, only because he’s Democrat out of convenience, not because of his beliefs. According to everything I’ve read, Clarke’s been poo-pooing a possible run against Mayor Barrett, but I tend to believe his ego’s too big for him to sit this one out. If he were smart, he’d sit this election out, simply because he’s not likely to finish much better this time than he did in 2003, when he finished third. Another likely contender is Milwaukee Alderman Bob Donovan, a man who never met a camera he didn’t want to spend some time talking to. I suppose that’s the nature of a politician, but Bob Donovan just strikes me as being more snake oil salesman and less public servant, and I honestly believe it’s just a matter of time before he’s caught doing something illegal/immoral/improper.

I’m sure there’ll be some less obvious folks who run to try and oust Mayor Barrett, but I really don’t think anyone stands a chance of beating Tom Barrett. Milwaukee loves its incumbent Mayors, and Tom Barrett has done about as well as anyone could have expected since taking office. If I still lived in Milwaukee, I know I’d cast my vote for Tom Barrett.

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So I came across an interesting article in the MJS about Michael Monyelle, a convicted sex offender who recently told his parole he was having deviant thoughts about children, including his sister’s young children. In addition to having consensual sexual contact with two underage girls when he was 19 and 20, Mr. Monyelle also had sexual contact with a 9-year-old boy when he was 16. Because of his past history of sex offenses, as well as his admissions of deviant thoughts, Mr. Monyelle is now facing an indefinite commitment to inpatient treatment as a “sexually violent person” under Wisconsin’s Chapter 980 laws.

I’ve come across some folks in the blogosphere who are concerned about the dangerous precedent being set by locking someone up indefinitely for their thoughts - not their actions. While I agree that it’s a slippery slope when you’re talking about locking someone up for their thoughts, the thing to remember here is that in addition to what Mr. Monyelle was convicted of, he’s admitted to having recent deviant thoughts about young children. Now granted, he hasn’t acted on those thoughts, which is obviously a good thing, but if he’s having those thoughts it’s probably just a matter of time before the opportunity presents itself for him to act on those thoughts. The important thing to remember here is that the common belief is that once a pedophile, always a pedophile. In fact, sex offender treatment isn’t so much about “curing” sex offenders as it’s about risk abatement. Sex offender treatment is all about helping teach sex offenders to recognize their triggers and urges, as well as teaching them coping mechanisms to deal with those urges.

Another important thing to remember is that if a guy like Mr. Monyelle is telling his parole agent he’s having deviant thoughts, that agent is obligated to act on that self-report. The primary duty of probation and parole agents is to protect the community from the folks they supervise, and failure to act on something like Mr. Monyelle’s admission would be a failure on the part of that agent to do his or her job.

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I came across an interesting article in today’s MSJ about the “Healthy Wisconsin” universal healthcare proposal that’s been included in the state budget by Senate Democrats. What’s interesting about the article is that it talks about how the proposal came into being, more specifically the fact that it’s modeled in large part on the ideas of Alain Enthoven, a retired retired professor at Stanford University who specializes in health care economics. Enthoven’s ideas focus on how to use market forces to lower costs and expand coverage. In other words, health care providers would compete to offer the most cost-effective, high-quality health care, and those providers that offered the highest quality and most cost-effective care would be rewarded with more patients. According to the article:

They (market forces) would require restructuring the health care system in a way that eliminates existing incentives that reward hospitals and doctors for providing more care as opposed to efficient care.

What a novel concept…rewarding health care providers for providing efficient care, as opposed to simply providing more care. The proposed plan would force health plans to compete on cost and quality, which in theory should cause doctors and hospitals to become more efficient, providing better care at lower costs.

What’s interesting to note is that Enthoven isn’t a fan of a single-payer universal health care system, stating, “The government often gets it wrong in setting prices.” As I understand it, the “Healthy Wisconsin” proposal wouldn’t be a single-payer system, but rather a system much like the current state employees health care plan. The current state employees health care plan allows employees the option of choosing their own health care provider from a list of approved providers who have met certain benchmarks for quality and efficiency of service. It’s a nice plan, and I appreciate being given the option of choosing the health care provider I feel is best suited to my needs and those of my family.

I know Republicans in the Assembly and Senate are frothing at the mouth in their opposition to the “Healthy Wisconsin” proposal, and while I can appreciate their concerns about higher taxes, this is a plan that makes sense, isn’t “socialized medicine” as some Republicans are so fond of labeling almost all universal health care proposals, and will ultimately benefit each and every resident of the state.

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CNN is reporting that Senator John McCain’s campaign has had yet another lackluster quarter for fundraising, raising just 11.2 million dollars, down from the 13.6 million dollars he raised during the last quarter. As if that’s not bad enough news for the McCain campaign, it’s being reported the campaign’s cash on hand is somewhere around 2 million dollars. This recent fundraising letdown has led to a prompt reorganization of the McCain campaign, with at least 50 staffers being let go. This is the second round of layoffs for the McCain campaign, a grim reminder of how far he’s fallen since his days as the presumptive frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination. Senator McCain now trails Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney, and Fred Thompson in most of the polls that matter, and I can’t help but wonder if we’re watching the dying breaths of a floundering campaign.

Personally, I’m glad to see Senator McCain’s campaign faltering, because something about him always bothered me. I’ve always taken issue with Senator McCain trying to paint himself as a maverick within the Republican Party (anyone remember the Straight Talk Express from the 2000 campaign?) when in all reality he’s as conservative as just about any member of the United States Senate. I’m glad that Senator McCain’s finally been exposed as just another typical Republican, and I can’t help but laugh at how his blind devotion to George W. Bush’s handling of the War in Iraq has led to the inevitable demise of his campaign. Perhaps Senator McCain should have been a little more of a maverick when it came to Iraq - if he had, perhaps he’d find his campaign on more solid ground.

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So according to pretty much every news source out there, Barack Obama has raised nearly 33 million dollars since April, breaking - no shattering - the previous record for money raised in a three month period by a Democratic Presidential candidate.

Obama’s good fortune seems to have come at the expense of John Edwards, whose campaign could only pull in roughly 9 million dollars. Folks over at the Edwards campaign have already begun spinning things, insisting they’ve had a “great quarter.” Now I don’t proclaim to be an expert on the inner workings of a presidential campaign, but it would seem to me that raising 5 million dollars less in the past three months than you did in the three months prior isn’t a good sign, especially when coupled with news that the guy right above you in most polls pulled in roughly 6 million more in the same period of time. What it’s starting to look like is that Obama’s finally starting to suck support (and dollars) away from Edwards, whose campaign seems likely to stall and fall into the second tier of candidates.

Speaking of the so-called “second tier” of Democratic candidates, the CNN report I happened to read noted that Governor Richardson’s campaign brought in at least 7 million dollars since April, which is roughly a million dollars more than the previous three months. This is yet another bad sign for the Edwards campaign, and as a Richardson supporter, I’m glad to see he’s starting to close the gap between himself and John Edwards. If Governor Richardson can manage a better than expected showing in either Iowa or New Hampshire, coupled with a solid showing in Nevada, he could be poised to present a viable and sensible alternative for folks who might not be sold on HRC or Obama, both of whom have serious flaws as candidates.

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