Lee Enterprises is in trouble.  It is based in Davenport, IA.  It publishes newspapers.  Its stock sold at $14 per share a year ago and closed recently at $0.41 per share.  It may not be able to continue its operations. 

So what.

We hear about the newspaper industry over and over it seems.  And virtually none of the news is good.  We are shifting our news gathering efforts and the results are that the news gets worse instead of better for newspapers, in general.  Now we learn about a relatively obscure company, to many at least, that is in the same fix in which many newspaper publishing companies find themselves.

So what.

Lee Enterprises has a big footprint in Wisconsin.  It owns half of Madison Newspapers Inc. and that means it impacts the Capital Times and The Wisconsin State Journal, the Daily Citizen in Beaver Dam, the Baraboo News Republic, and the Portage Daily Register.  It owns the La Crosse Tribune.  It owns the The Chippewa Herald in Chippewa Falls and The Journal Times in Racine.  It owns the Dunn County News in Menomonie, the Coulee News in West Salem, the Houston County News in neighboring La Crescent, MN and the Winona Daily News in neighboring Winona, MN.  It owns the Jackson County Chronicle in Black River Falls, The Chronicle in Melrose, the Onalaska/Holmen Courier-Life News, the Tomah Journal and Monitor Herald, the Vernon County Broadcaster in my old hometown of Viroqua, and the Westby Times.  It owns the Juneau County Star-Times in Mauston, and the Reedsburg Times-Press, and the Sauk Prairie Eagle in Sauk City.  It prints and distributes over 1,200,000 copies of various weekly and monthly publications featuring local advertising, homes for sale, vehicles for sale, and on and on.

This company in Davenport, IA has a tremendous footprint in our state and neighboring areas, and it could be on its way out of existence.

I know many people who value their weekly newspapers, and their 'shoppers' for they have received these pieces week in and week out for longer than they can remember, or they have plucked them off the 'free' stands at the supermarket or in the gas station.  Our family still subscribes to the Vernon County Broadcaster since we still have friends and relatives in that area and can stay somewhat in touch with their worlds in that manner.

We read the stories of failing newsprint-based organizations and don't think much about the impact their failure could have beyond the loss that would represent to employees and families and stockholders.  That loss is not to be diminished but it doesn't necessarily have a face.

This potential loss of a publishing company has a face, at least for me, and I know for hundreds of thousands of people where I grew up.  We are witness to a dramatic change in our country and the world from which some will never recover because they're not sufficiently tech savvy.

That's so what.

Cigarette Taxes...

The state raised cigarette taxes to $1.77 per pack and promptly budgeted/spent all the new money that would bring in.  The only problem is that this 230% increase in the tax rate only generated a 48% increase in the tax money received!  Now, we're stuck with a lot of people circumventing the tax entirely by buying cigarettes out-of-state or over the Internet.  And, we have added to an already staggering budget shortfall.

Makes a lot sense, huh?

~~~~~

Clean Air Act Gone Wild...

One of my favorite agencies, the EPA, has decided that it now has free rein over so-called greenhouse gases.  This came to pass as the result of a 'namby-pamby' U.S. Supreme Court decision last year that didn't go quite far enough to ward off this rampant agency.  EPA has now released its Advanced Notice of Proposed Rule-making, an ANPR in the jargon, and this is astonishing.  EPA would regulate airplanes, trains, ships, boats, tractors, farm and mining equipment, lawn mowers, garden equipment, portable power generators, fork lift trucks, construction equipment and logging equipment.

EPA estimates that more than 500,000 new permits will be required.  Among the supposed new requirements are these:

• Lawn mower standards:  "...each application could require a different unit of measure tied to the machine's mission or output-such as grams per kilogram of cuttings from a 'standard' lawn for lawn mowers."
• Truck speed standards:  "Speed limiters are generally available on new trucks or as a low cost retro-fit..."
• Single family homes become polluters:  "...we believe that small commercial establishments...and indeed, a large single-family residence could exceed this [CO2 pollution] threshold."

All of this means that our taxes go up exponentially since the EPA will be forced to grow staff and facilities to handle this new found mission.  And, it means that we'll all pay more for products and services.

And, none of this was ever the intent of Congress nor has it had the opportunity to inject itself to this point.

~~~~~

Compact Fluorescent Bulbs...

Regular, nice old incandescent light bulbs (starting with 100 watt bulbs) become illegal to manufacture in 2012.  The National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA) points out that this means we can forget about spending 20 cents or so for the old bulb while buying the new CFLs for something on the order of $3.00+ (remember that these are usually subsidized today).

While CFLs save energy, they have costs associated with them that make all this really questionable:

• The average lifetime is not 10,000 hours, but "up to 10,000 hours"
• The energy savings and lifetime of CFLs has been exaggerated in some applications
• The CFL only achieves the claimed efficiency if burned continuously for long periods
• If left on for only 5 minute periods, the CFL will burn out just as fast as an incandescent bulb
• CFLs dim over their lifetime and do not deliver what is promised

And, we're adding mercury to the environment which supposedly will be handled by proper disposal.  Yeah, sure!  How many of us has disposed of a burned out CFL improperly already?  How is that ever going to be policed?

~~~~~

Clean Water Restoration Act...

The EPA is back again.  The original Clean Water Act of 1972 had gotten to be very broadly interpreted under various EPA rulings.  "Navigable waters" had morphed into isolated wetlands, dry lake beds and drainage ditches, for example.  Now, two Democrat members of Congress have introduced the bill named in the title.  It would replace the phrase "navigable waters" with the phrase "waters of the United States"  This means "all waters subject to ebb and flow of the tide, the territorial seas, and all interstate and intrastate waters and their tributaries, including lakes, rivers, streams (including intermittent streams), mudflats, sloughs, prairie potholes, wet meadows, playa lakes, natural ponds and all impoundments of the foregoing".  Reason magazine, August/September 2008

If this bill were to pass in its current state, it would very likely result in massive new regulations for boaters, fishermen, hunters, and even conservationists.  This act would leave it to the courts to decide what constitutes "waters of the United States".

Thanks to Ronald Bailey for writing the article "Feds in a Fishbowl" in Reason.

~~~~~

Anti-Meat Campaign...

Finally, from the Heartland Institute, this on global warming activists' latest efforts.  They are launching new efforts to restrict meat production and consumption, building on prior efforts to restrict various agriculture activities that supposedly would reduce 'greenhouse gases'.

More on this can be found on the worldchanging.org website.

If we continue to have a ban on drilling more oil, we won't be able to buy meat anyway, so maybe this isn't as bad as I first thought.

Maybe we really do have too many crackpots in Congress...or too many people are being paid through campaign contributions and don't have the commonsense necessary to sort out the good from the crazy.

Oregon has had government involved in health care for quite a few years.  The state electorate also approved the concept of state sanctioned suicide several years ago.

Recently, the board that reviews the medications that are approved for state residents made a determination that was controversial...in my mind if no where else.  The board, in essence, said that, given the cost of a certain medication, it would approve suicide for this patient but would not approve use of the medicine given its relative newness and the lack of convincing data as to the outcome.  It had essentially set a price on the human life involved.

Today I read the story concerning Denver Children's Hospital and heart transplants in infants that use the heart from another infant that died a 'cardiac-related death'.  This differs from a heart harvested from a brain-dead infant in which that heart is beating until removed from the donor body.  A decision has been made that the donor that has been pronounced dead and has been in that state for only 75 seconds, is a valid heart donor for purposes of this new program.  The earlier line that had existed required death be determined only after some five minutes during which time the heart did not re-start itself.  In this instance, the length of time a person had been deemed 'dead' had been reduced to assure that the harvested heart had a decent chance of functioning in the new body.  The three cases in which this approach has been employed resulted in three infants alive today.  The decisions to withdraw life support were made by the parents in all three instances.

We know so much more today than we did a decade ago.  We can do things from a medical perspective that were impossible then, and these procedures have become commonplace now.  We are, in this area, pushing the envelope as it has never before been pushed.

I know there are at least two sides to these issues.  I have good friends whose daughter lives today because of transplanted organs that were available on a timely basis.  I can't even begin to comprehend being placed in the middle of such decisions, and I earnestly hope that never befalls me.

And this leads to my general question:  Is there a line we dare not cross?  If so, where is or was that line?  Am I comfortable with an appointed board making life and death decisions about me?  Who among us can claim the right to make such a decision?  How do medical ethicists deal with these kinds of issues?

I don't profess to have the answers to these questions.  If you do, and you're willing to share, I'd appreciate your comments.

A short week ago I wrote about Eliot Spitzer and the havoc that he had wrought as the Attorney General of the State of New York.  I referred to the 'trail of carnage' that he had left behind in his quest for higher office.

Yesterday the press reported about his apparent involvement in a prostitution ring, and we witnessed his non-apology apology delivered in front of his weary and saddened wife.  Eliot Spitzer appears to have been caught up in his own 'trail of carnage' as has his wife and their three daughters.  He will likely be forced from office in disgrace; he could be indicted on federal charges since the prostitute traveled across state lines to meet him in his Washington, D.C. hotel room where he registered in the name of one of his friends.

His political enemies, and there are legions of those, are after his head, politically speaking.  Politics in New York is indeed blood sport.  The story will unfold over the coming days and weeks and months.

But all this notwithstanding, there still are those who were hurt by this megalomaniac (my diagnosis) during his meteoric ride.  And there are those who have been hurt badly by this latest revelation.

Yet, as much as I dislike the actions of this man, I feel saddened, particularly for his family.  It may be that his past has caught up with him; I don't know.  But I still think of those who lost companies and positions and reputations by his doing.  Forgiveness is difficult but certainly a worthy goal, especially it seems for an Eliot Spitzer.

Eliot Spitzer was the New York State Attorney General before he became Governor of that state.  Spitzer has the well-deserved reputation as a 'pit bull'.  The Wall Street Journal editors brought up his trail of carnage (my term) today discussing what he did to major organizations in America with his 'pit bull' style of threatening companies with enough damage to cause them to 'voluntarily' do as he directed they do. He made himself the investigator, the accuser, the judge and the jury.

The two companies mentioned this morning are AIG, the world's largest insurance organization, at least at that time, and Marsh & McLennan, a leading U.S. insurance brokerage organization.  Spitzer's threats caused both companies to fire their Chairmen.  Both companies have been on a downhill slide ever since costing shareholders huge sums of money in retirement funds, stock portfolios and so forth.  Many of these investors are you and me, whether or not we know it.

Those were companies caught up in Mr. Spitzer's web in New York City.  There was another that is much nearer and dearer to many in the Milwaukee area.  Strong Funds, and the related companies in Dick Strong's business holdings at the time, found themselves caught up in the Spitzer meat grinder.  The charges were of a questionable nature but that didn't stop the meat grinder that was Eliot Spitzer.  The Strong organization's good name was soon damaged beyond repair.

In the end, Dick Strong was forced to sell his companies at essentially 'fire sale' prices.  He paid significant fines for the trading activities in which he supposedly engaged.  The remains are now operated as part of the Wells Fargo organization.  The hundreds and hundreds of Strong employees who lost their jobs have, I hope, found their way into other organizations and may have forgotten much of the anguish they were personally subjected to by the Spitzer meat grinder.

Dick Strong, who was, and is, one of the finest men our community could hope to have in it, has survived.  Certainly his personal wealth probably has diminished somewhat although he is not in danger of losing a home or having nothing to eat.  There are some who will look at his situation and feel good because one of the 'haves' got what he deserved.  Those people are sadly misinformed and will simply have to live with their misshapen ideas.

The real loss has been for our community.  The companies Dick ran were major contributors to the community.  Those companies are gone and I doubt that Wells Fargo has taken over the philanthropy that was once the domain of the Strong group of companies.  Few buyers would have done so.  I am sure that Dick is still doing good works because that is who he is.

All this because a man named Eliot Spitzer managed to bull his way through the office of Attorney General of New York state in his quest for the Governor's chair and maybe even a run for President at some point in his political career.  I'll remember to my last day, and I'll remain saddened over what this man brought upon us...in the name of justice.

Earmarks...

The Republicans are fighting amongst themselves over whether or not to try to control their budget 'earmarks', and if so, how to proceed.  The party's elected members met over the week-end and failed to take any real steps to end earmarks.  The President is expected to address earmarks in his State of the Union address this evening.  It is reported that he will tell Congress that he'll veto any appropriation bills for 2009 that have greater than 50% as much in the way of earmarks as the same bill in 2008 carried.

That is a start, but until we have convinced our elected officials that they are spending our money and not their money, we will make little if any real progress.

And, this may well be the only true bipartisan area we have.  It is an affliction of both major parties as well as the small group calling themselves independents.

Limits On The WCCA...

WCCA stands for Wisconsin Consolidated Court Automation and it has a website that you can access here.

This site permits any citizen to locate information about court decisions, charges filed, cases scheduled and so on by county.  If you have an interest in where the case involving John and Jane Doe stands, you would access the site, pick the county (if you know it) and key in one of the names.  You'll then see the actions that have been taken, dismissals if that is the case, etc.

For some strange reason there have been two recent attempts to limit public access.  Last summer, two Democrats (Schneider of Wisconsin Rapids and Kessler of Milwaukee) mounted such an effort.  They would've permitted access only for court officials, law enforcement personnel, attorneys and journalists.  Now Rep. Vos (R-Racine) and Sen. Lassa (D-Stevens Point) want to limit access by removing certain cases from this site.  Those cases or charges would include a civil forfeiture or misdemeanor within 90 days after dismissal, a finding of not guilty or if the case has been overturned on appeal and then dismissed.  Felonies would carry the same requirement except the time frame would be extended to 120 days.

Both of these efforts are misguided at best and an assault on our rights at worst.  Wouldn't the accused rather have the information there for all to see if he or she had been absolved or if the case had been dismissed.  Why would we be concerned about those convicted? 

An example of the significance can be found in articles now running in the Journal Sentinel concerning physicians who have been involved in numerous complaints alledging malpractice over the course of time.  Many of those records would become unavailable under these efforts to wipe the slate clean.  This is not only an assault on our rights but it is also potentially going to endanger lives.

Anti-Gun Proposals...

Many in the group that would outlaw ownership of guns, or the group that wants to ban the carrying of guns (that is legal in 47 other states) would have us believe that their solution is the answer.

Here are some snippets that seem to point in the other direction:

• New Jersey adopted a very strict gun law in 1966 and by 1968 the murder rate was up 46% and the robbery rate was up nearly 100%.
• Hawaii adopted a series of anti-gun laws and its murder rate tripled over the next ten years.
• Washington, D.C. imposed strict gun control laws in 1976; its murder rate has grown by 134% since.
• England banned handgun ownership in 1997, and the number of citizens injured by firearms has more than doubled since.
• Prior to these actions, the statistics cited had been falling.

When guns are banned, only the bad guys have guns.  In states where concealed carry laws are in place, the bad guys really have to think hard about trying anything.

Miller Executive Dies In Walkers Point Shooting...

The Director of Compensation and Benefits for Miller Brewing was killed at about 1:10AM on Sunday morning after leaving a bar in Walkers Point.  He was accosted by a robber, gave the person his wallet and was then shot to death as he sat in his auto.

The concern immediately arose over whether Milwaukee would suffer as the result of this in the process that is now ongoing as to where the headquarters of the new combined Miller Coors will be located.  It is reported that crime and homicide rates rank first in the equation that most corporations use to determine quality of life rankings.  The Journal Sentinel reported this morning, and I paraphrase, that Milwaukee is 2.3% larger in population than Denver, has 228% more violent crime including 263% more homicides.  This is extrapolated from the FBI's statistics for the first half of 2007 that were recently released.

Would you think about that if you were making the decision?  Would you add in the fact that MPS is graduating 50% or fewer of all students that start as freshmen?

Seemingly everytime we pick up a newspaper or periodical we see that health care costs have risen again.  The only real question anymore is 'How Much?'.  Of course, if we still have health insurance, the premium rates continue to go up and up.  What in the world can we do about this?  Would statewide mandatory insurance coverage do the trick?  Can we somehow legislate lower insurance premiums?  Are the drug companies really the culprits?  Maybe we simply need to move to Canada or Europe.

Recent studies show that our national health care spending increased in 2006 by 6.7% to $2.1 trillion.  That means that one out of every six dollars spent in our national economy goes for health care.  The 'good news' in this staggering number is that this is actually slower growth than we saw for 2005.  Apparently we're going in the right direction, even if too slowly.

Another amazing fact, to me at least, is the amount of 'out-of-pocket' spending each of us averages after insurance premiums, etc.  In 2006, we spent, on average, 12% out-of-pocket for our health care expenses.  Know what we spent out-of-pocket in 1960?  We spent 47% out-of-pocket for health care expenses. 

That means that we are shielded to a much greater degree today from our real health care costs than we were in 1960.  Our out-of-pocket costs have decreased steadily since 1960.  We are often at the point today where we think of the cost of health care as being the $10 or $20 co-pay we have to come up with when we go to see the doctor.  Or, the $20 or $30 dollars we have to cough up for medicines.  Those amounts are very small percentages of the total costs.

Why is this important?  It is important because we need to think about what we're spending if we're ever going to be able to bring this cost spiral under control.  If we come to understand that the real cost of the doctor visit is in the range of $125 to $150 or more, we can begin to understand that maybe we shouldn't be running to the doctor everytime we have a runny nose or a cough.

Another very interesting fact is this:  more than 50% of all health care claims costs in America today are to cover lifestyle-related illnesses.  Those are the things that you and I can control to one degree or another.  But, we can't control them if we don't know about it or if we choose not to do anything about it.  What are 'lifestyle' issues?  Smoking, alcohol use, obesity and simply laying around doing no exercise.

Does this apply to us?  Here are the most current facts:  One in every four Americans eat fast food every day!  Six of ten Americans do not exercise or seldom exercise!  Two of every three Americans are classified as either overweight or obese!

This is the real source of our health care cost crisis.  We have met the enemy and it is us!

No mandatory state programs, or profit controls on drug companies or anything else is going to solve this problem.  The simple truth is that this is up to us.  All the rest of these proposals are simply pablum calculated to make us feel good.

That is why this 'stuff' is flowing from the mouths of politicans.  And it does nothing to solve the problem!

Let your politicians know that you understand this.  If they really want to help us, they'll begin an educational program using some of the 'smoker money' to get the true message out.  And, be sure to tell them we do not want laws banning fast food or drinking or smoking.  We need to take responsibility for ourselves.  No one else can do that for us.  The marketplace will make its own corrections just as you've begun to see with the menu changes going on in the world of fast foods, for example.

Maybe if insurance companies were permitted to charge people what we deserve to be charged based on our lifestyle habits, we'd begin to see these changes occur.  If I smoke, I pay more.  If I'm overweight, I pay a surcharge.  Make me feel my wallet lightening up if I don't take personal responsibility (just don't think this is your new way to raise taxes). 

Don't just continue to blame big health, or big drugs or big insurance!  You are doing nothing but pandering when you resort to this, and we're on to you!

How in the world can one combine freedom and light bulbs in the same context?  Well, let's see.

We are being told that incandescent light bulbs are being eliminated in favor of a nationwide conversion to the use of compact fluorescent lamps.  Those are, so far, considerably more expensive to produce (although subsidized by tax money to make them seem less expensive), are not capable of generating the kind of lumens to which we're accustomed, the color of light is different from what we're used to seeing and they have no where near the flexibility we find with incandescent bulbs.

As if this weren't sufficient, the idea of using compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs) laden with mercury is a bit disconcerting to me.  I have quite a few fluorescent tubes and a couple of CFLs that I need to toss out.  I called the Village of Germantown staff to learn about proper disposal.  The nice lady who answered on the solid waste disposal line said, "That's a problem."  As we talked about this further, I learned that the next dangerous waste disposal date is set for September, 2008 in West Bend.  Our recycling center is either unable or unwilling to accept such things.

I sought an alternative that would be available sooner.  There is a site in Port Washington equipped to take these items but they charge for the privilege of recycling such things.  I think you and I both know that these things are regularly finding their way into our landfill sites, and that will increase at quite a rate as more people are forced to begin their use.  We are creating a serious mercury problem for ourselves that will manifest some years down the road.  Our land, wetlands and streams, rivers and lakes will be more polluted than they are today.

All this got me thinking about where we've come from, why we're where we are, and just what it all means.  I'm not at all sure that I have everything figured out, but maybe you can help me work through the parts I don't seem to understand.

We are using more carbon-based energy than many think we ought, but we also ignore solutions that we've mastered many years ago.  Nuclear energy is safe and efficient and yet we've not built new reactors in years.  We have oil fields available on our turf but we're forbidden by our own government from drilling into that apparently sacred soil.  There is more oil available today but we can't refine it any faster than we are today even if we had access to a greater supply.  Why?  Because the government has caused the establishment of new refining facilities to be so cumbersome and expensive that it simply is not cost-effective for investors to plow money into that use.

The grand movement by those who think we need to be 'green' has caused our 'political' will to be turned against the will of the majority of citizens.  The 'green' people are outnumbered by the 'non-green' people; yet, our main stream press and politicos continue to thump the drum for being 'green'.  Lobbyists spend a lot of money to keep this political engine humming along.  Government has the best of both worlds in this situation.  It is getting money from both sides of the argument, so why not keep the argument alive by dithering.

The 'global warming' group adds fuel to these flames.  It seems that virtually everything causes global warming.  It also seems that global warming causes virtually everything.  I could easily understand hot weather being a direct function of global warming.  I have a little more difficulty believing that cold weather is also caused by global warming.  Until very recently, any debate has been squelched; that is now changing and, I hope, we'll begin to see the real debate taking place.  I cannot buy the suppositions of Al Gore's slide show.  I can buy the opinions, however, of a very well educated state representative by the name of Jim Ott (a professional meteorologist), who actually knows of which he speaks.  An interesting phenomenon from a politician, I agree.

I harangue on the subject of the 'slippery slope' more than many would like, but there are simply so many examples that I cannot help myself!  Then, to add fuel to that flame, I came across a statement in the Wall Street Journal letters section on Friday made by a fellow whose name is Constantine E. Anagnostopoulos from Bloomfield, MI.  To paraphrase, he stated that we began as a country in which everything was permitted except for those few things that had been forbidden such as killing another person without provocation.  Today, we are a country where many things are forbidden and fewer and fewer things seem to be allowed. 

We have myriad laws on the books, and yet we continue to enact new laws every month that a government unit is in session.  There is nearly nothing that needs to be outlawed that hasn't had multiple laws forbidding it already enacted.  (An example is the creation of a law against use of cell phones when there is a perfectly good law against inattentive driving already on the books.)  We have become such a nation of laws and litigation that we actually stifle our creativity, our economy and our lives.  It is impossible for anyone today to account for every law that impacts a certain activity.  We even feel the need to have judges 'creating' laws that don't exist through their interpretations of existing language, or by opining as to what the original authors intended as the 'living' documents were penned.  Our laws are more designed to affect behaviors to which the ruling class does not subscribe than to actually outlaw something needing to be outlawed.  Laws today are much more the tool of social reformers than of policing agencies. 

These are all harbingers for our future existence.  If we continue on the path we're on, at the pace we're traveling, we'll have managed to destroy the freedoms generations before have fought and died for in a few short lifetimes.  Maybe the loss of great democracies, as history recounts, is our self-fulfilling prophecy.

All this began with a diatribe on light bulbs.  Wow!