In This Issue | 1. When the Going Gets
Tough
2. Starve the People
3. Your Ancesters
Understood Free
Speech
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When the Going Gets Tough, Doyle Gets out of Town
 While the State of Wisconsin faces a $525 million deficit, legislative leaders say they are negotiating behind the scenes to come up with a solution. Both sides have agreed their budget fix will not include a new $400 million hospital tax, but it is unclear where the legislature will find the additional money needed to plug the half billion dollar hole. Governor Doyle, whose mismanagement caused the budget problem to begin with, has apparently decided to look for a solution to Wisconsin's budget woes in Ireland.
This week, Doyle announced he would be heading to Ireland and the UK, leaving budget negotiations behind. This will be Doyle's sixth "trade mission" since 2003, but the only thing Doyle is likely to "trade" is a budget headache for a nice cold pint of Guiness. The state revenue generated by Doyle's previous trade missions seems to have gotten lost somwhere in the couch cushions at the Governor's mansion. Our illustrious Governor has a knack for fleeing the country when he sees trouble brewing. When Doyle Administration staffer Georgia Thompson was indicted for allegedly rigging a state travel contract to benefit one of Doyle's biggest contributors, Doyle sought refuge in Baghdad. Apparently he thought it would easier to dodge suicide bombers than members of the Capitol press corps.
Last September when the state budget was months overdue and a deadline for setting state aid to local school districts was looming, Doyle fled the country, this time taking his entourage on a 12 day trade mission to China and Japan. Before abandoning budget negotiations at home to down saki with Japanese officials, he threatened a government shutdown if legislators didn't come to an agreement. The impact of Doyle's Asia trip is still unknown. Perhaps the timing of Doyle's upcoming trip to Ireland can be explained by the ongoing trial of racketeer and Doyle pal, Tony Rezko. Doyle and Rezko dined together before sharing a luxury box at a Packers-Bears game at Soldier field. Last week, testimony in the Rezko trial turned to Wisconsin and the man who introduced Doyle to Rezko. It is unclear whether Doyle is leaving town to escape the budget mess he created or to elude embarrassing questions about his ties to Tony Rezko. The one thing we know for sure is when the going gets tough, Governor Doyle skips town.
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Starve the People, Save the Planet
 While biofuels are all the rage among environmentalists and the big corn lobby, the world economy has begun to feel the strain resulting from putting our food supply in our gas tanks.
According to the World Bank, the price of wheat and rice has doubled since 2004, and the price of soybeans, sugar, soybean oil and corn are expected to rise 56% to 79% over the same period. The World Bank attributes most of these price increases to the reduction in supply of these food products in the West due to their expanded use in the production of biofuels. As most of us learned in high school, the scarcity of a product in demand is what determines it's price. As food costs have risen it's become more difficult to provide relief to high-poverty areas of the world. According to the Wall Street Journal, food inflation and shortages have sparked riots from Egypt to the Philippines, and six people were killed in Haiti alone during nine days of food riots there this month. Wisconsin corn growers, the largest beneficiaries of high corn prices, are naturally convinced that ethanol has nothing to do with higher food prices. The Wall Street Journal disagrees: "It's no coincidence that the U.S. and the EU, which are leading the biofuel charge, both have powerful ag lobbies that see this latest eco-craze as a new way to milk taxpayers. U.S. and EU promotion of biofuels represent a trifecta of bad regulation: arbitrary production targets to juice demand, subsidies that encourage inefficient use of crops as fuel rather than food, and tariffs that stifle foreign competition. If only Third World consumers had the same influence as rich-world farmers." For decades vocal environmentalists have attacked overpopulation as a leading cause of the world's pollution. If they keep pushing biofuels as a salve to the environment's woes, they will get their ultimate wish, since people in high poverty countries will starve to death at alarming rates.
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Your Ancestors Understood Free Speech
 With the state's new Government Accountability Board (GAB) granting itself jurisdiction over federally regulated non-profit advertising, Christian Schneider of the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute traveled back in history to examine the nature and tenor of political speech and the campaigns that occurred soon after the founding of our nation.
Schneider examined presidential races from the 1800's, when the direction of our nation was still very much in doubt. In seminal races, the vitriol and dirt flew hard and fast, in a manner that makes today's negative ads look like toothpaste commercials. For example, in 1796, John Adams' supporters attacked Thomas Jefferson as an "atheist," "anarchist," "demagogue," "coward," and "trickster," and said that Jefferson's followers were "cut-throats who walk in rags and sleep amid filth and vermin." Four years later, a pro-Adams newspaper called Jefferson a "a mean-spirited, low-lived fellow, the son of a half-breed Indian squaw, sired by a Virginia mulatto father." In 1828, John Quincy Adams ran against Andrew Jackson. Adams' supporters distributed a cartoon of Jackson hanging a man in a noose, a reference to Jackson's time spent executing Seminole Indian sympathizers. The cartoon's caption read, "Jackson is to be president and you will be HANGED." Read more about the free speech that formed our democracy here. Amazingly, the U.S. survived dangerous free speech during our early years and developed into the world's lone superpower. Yet a group of unelected bureaucrats at the GAB think shutting down free speech during elections will be in the best interest of our democracy. Perhaps they could use a little historical perspective.
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