Uppity Wisconsin

Some of you are probably wondering what's up with that little Kachingle medallion on the right of the page.  And if you aren't wondering, I'm going to tell you anyway.

Uppity Wisconsin will be four years old in about 2 weeks.  Through that entire period, everything about the site has been paid for by myself and a (very) few generous contributors.  No big foundation here, no big political donations, no lobbyists.  Mostly just me and a couple of donors, most of whom are people who blog here. 

Gist of it is, I've been looking at the ol' corporate checkbook a lot lately and realized that if Uppity Wisconsin is going to exist into a fifth year, something has to change.  So we're giving you a chance to help.

Since I'm nominally in the business, none of this is surprising, but it's a little overwhelming to see it in one place.

Since I'm one of the crazy people who watched almost all of the health care-a-palooza yesterday, I thing Obama deserves some sort of award for putting up with what  happened and not hitting anyone.  Ditto anyone else in the room with any actual connection to reality. I award them a pair of boots:

toothpastefordinner.com

I guess it's national News Day.  As a warm-up for tomorrow's health-care-a-palooza, I thought this was an interesting video for a number of reasons.  I only wish it was only the Republicans who were wholly-owned subsidiaries of the health care industry.  Still, point taken (though apparently not written down).

This is not a Wisconsin story, but in light of the current debate in Wisconsin over expansion of nuclear energy, I think it's worth discussing.  Although the Vermont Yankee power plant in Vermont has been poised for a license renewal, the Vermont Senate today decided that they had had enough, and voted to close the plant down in 2012.  Those of you who follow these things will now ask "How the heck can that be? -- The state has no power over this". Normally true, but when Entergy purchased the plant, they agreed to let the state renew the state license for the plant at the time that the Federal license came up for renewal.Thus Vermont Yankee will soon be the first nuclear plant shut down by local government since Rancho Seco in 1989 (and that was simply because the plant had become too expensive to operate).

The Vermont Yankee plant has been troubled in recent years, having had a cooling tower collapse in 2007 (pictured here), and there have been recent disclosurs that the 38 year old plant has been leaking radioactive tritium.  Entergy and the state legislature have been embroiled in controversy over the tritium leak, since Entergy claimed the plant had not underground pipes capable of leaking tritium, a claim which later turned out to be false.

Although Entergy may consider filing suit to fight the shutdown, it seems unlikely that they will succeed in the unique legal circumstances of this particular plant. 

Yesterday's vote to overturn the governor's veto on the DNR secretary bill failed, with the Assembly voting 58-38.  10 Republicans and Independent Jeff Wood voted to override the veto, while 3 Democrats voted to sustain the governor's veto of the bill.  Since one did not vote, and 2 were paired, the vote required 64 votes to pass, so it was not a very close vote.

This is a major disappointment to the conservation groups who had joined together to attempt to override the veto.  So, for the time being, the DNR secretary will continue to be appointed by the governor.

Despite all appearances a few days ago, there is increasing support for putting the public option back in the health care bill in the senate.  Harry Reid is professing to at least nominal support for the idea, and it looks like if this is ever going to happen, this is the week. 

We're working with Change.org on a new set of on-line actions, and you can be one of the first to participate by clicking on the widget to your right, which will let you send a personal message to our Wisconsin senators.  It's free, it's fast, it's easy.  Go to it.

You may have been noticing that the site has been more than a little squirrely for the last 12 hours or so.  We're having more than a little trouble with one of our advertisers' ad servers.  So for the nonce, no ads.  We're working on it.

T. Wall has started his campaign for real, releasing his first attack ad on Russ Feingold.  See Below..  The ad implies that Feingold is not listening to the fact that everyone in Wisconsin is against health care  reform, and is shoving it down their throats, using carefully selected video from one of his listening sesisons.  One angry tea party person is not the entire state.

I happens I attended one of Feingold's listening sesisons on Saturday.  I was amused to see that the local media seem to have had a completely different impression of what happened at his local listening sessions than I did, again fortified by a couple of sound bites.

So - since I happened to record most of Feingold's sesison in Boyceville, I though I'd put up the first half of it here so you could judge for yourselves.  Please try to ignore the lousy video and audio quality - it wasn't exactly studio conditions.

The FBI is again pushing to have all ISP's keep track of all web visits for the purpose of law enforcement. At a meeting Thursday arranged by the Commerce Department, FBI Director Robert Mueller again asked that all destination and source requests for web traffic would be tracked and retained for up to 2 years.

The Yes Men are at it again, creating a video interview with a "representative" of ADM from Davos.  ADM is currently trying to have these removed from the Internet.  Here's our small bit to help keep it alive.

You may have noticed the little block to the right that cropped up a few days ago.  It's your opportunity to contribute to Russ Feingold's upcoming campaign, securely, and on-line through Act Blue.  We will in the coming months be adding in more progressive Wisconsin candidates that you can donate to right here.  There'll be more news about that later.  But in the meantime, help to keep a truly progressive senator representing our state in Congress. 

And by the way, we're open to suggestions on any other candidates who deserve support.

If the banks, who have shown themselves willing to fund almost anything, won't fund the nuclear industry, why should we?

As expected, the Supreme Court just ruled 5-4 against key provisions of campaign finance, opening the floodgates of corporate and union money just in time for the 2010 elections.  Look forward to a level of bogus flirting with the truth at a level that you've never seen before.

I'm considering throwing my TV out in the snow.

Update - News from The Sconz and NYT

Update - Sunlight Foundation Weighs in:

Update - Feingold Statement:

"It is important to note that the decision does not affect McCain-Feingold’s soft money ban, which will continue to prevent corporate contributions to the political parties from corrupting the political process.  But this decision was a terrible mistake.  Presented with a relatively narrow legal issue, the Supreme Court chose to roll back laws that have limited the role of corporate money in federal elections since Teddy Roosevelt was president.  Ignoring important principles of judicial restraint and respect for precedent, the Court has given corporate money a breathtaking new role in federal campaigns. Just six years ago, the Court said that the prohibition on corporations and unions dipping into their treasuries to influence campaigns was ‘firmly embedded in our law.’  Yet this Court has just upended that prohibition, and a century's worth of campaign finance law designed to stem corruption in government.  The American people will pay dearly for this decision when, more than ever, their voices are drowned out by corporate spending in our federal elections. In the coming weeks, I will work with my colleagues to pass legislation restoring as many of the critical restraints on corporate control of our elections as possible.

Just got word that our proposal to build a system for transparency web sites for Wisconsin townships has moved foward in the Knight News Challenge, and we are being allowed to submit a full proposal for the second stage.  Downsville leads the nation.