This time it is not an official government action that is attempting to stifle the voice of the business community, but rather an organized campaign involving misinformation, intimidation and threats of boycott.

The effort is being spearheaded by certain Madison-based politicos, unions and other like-minded interest groups who feel that the business community, and more specifically Wisconisn Manufacturers & Commerce, have been too effective at blocking their political and policy agendas.

Whether it is higher business taxes, more regulatory road blocks to creating manufacturing jobs or an activist majority on the Supreme Court, this faction has failed to convince the public to embrace its liberal agenda.

They blame the business community and are now trying to silence the primary voice of the business perspective - the WMC issue advocacy program. In the Alice in Wonderland world of Madison politics, where the virtues of tolerance and diversity are considered sacred, there apparently is no room for an alternative political or policy perspective that strays from liberal orthodoxy.

The campaign to silence WMC includes both the current and former mayors of Madison, a handful of other Dane county politicians and at least one newspaper editor.

They have a Web site devoted to WMC bashing and a couple of daily blogs. There is a weekly editorial rant in one of the local papers, which usually contains specious accusations of racism. They have organized pickets at WMC events, "meetings" with WMC Board members and boycotts of WMC member companies.

Their objective is to intimidate business leaders into withdrawing their voice from the marketplace of ideas. That way they ensure that the public is exposed to the only "true and correct" political and policy perspective as expressed by WEAC (Wisconsin Education Association Council) and the Greater Wisconsin Committee.

This misguided effort fails to account for the fact that Wisconsin business leaders are neither stupid nor cowards.

As our economy sags and we continue to bleed manufacturing jobs, the WMC leadership is more resolved than ever to advocate for sensible policies aimed at improving the business climate and creating jobs in Wisconsin. They feel the business community has an obligation to help policy makers and the general public understand how high taxes and increasing regulation harm our competitiveness.

They also believe that public disclosure of the voting records and policy positions of elected officials, be they members of the legislature or the Supreme Court, contributes to a healthy democratic process. And they are most firmly committed to ensuring that the public debate on politics and policy is not reduced to a monologue of left wing rhetoric.

(James A. Buchen is vice president, government relations, for Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce.)

You couldn’t help but feel close to the youngster when you heard so many people share their experiences with Felix.

It seems that everyone who came into contact with Felix was touched emotionally and spiritually by the youngster.

Felix had so much going against him, but he didn’t let it stop him from being the person he wanted to be. That was the message I got from the stories about Felix that had been written in the News Graphic.

I learned that he was a gifted artist who didn’t let his health problems stop him from making good use of his artistic talent. How many of us waste a talent we have been blessed with because we don’t have enough confidence in our ability?

Felix didn’t let that happen. He took the time he had here to do what he could and make the most of his ability. His works of art are vivid proof of what a person can accomplish, even under the most adverse of circumstances.

That’s what I have learned from listening to people talk about Felix and reading about him.

Felix was and continues to be an uplifting example for all of us.

Jan Rockley is managing editor of the News Graphic.

Using research provided by the Tax Foundation - a nonpartisan tax research group in Washington, D.C., - Forbes studied every county in America with a population over 65,000. They isolated counties in which over half of the per-pupil spending comes from property taxes, and then scratched off any county in which the average SAT score fell below 1,050 (math and verbal combined) or in which the ACT scores dropped below 22.

Forbes ranked the remaining counties using a 10-data-point system, which included factors such as cost of living, graduation rate, standardized scores, home price, property tax rate as a percentage of median home prices, percentage of homes occupied by the owner, per-capita income, air quality, crime rates and commute times. When the dust settled, Ozaukee County sat in second place, behind Hamilton County, Ind., just outside of Indianapolis, as the best place to raise a family in the country.

Geographical factors

If Forbes’ rankings had considered geographic factors such as being situated on the world’s largest supply of fresh water or being within an hour’s drive of Titletown, USA, in contrast to Hamilton County’s being smack dab in the middle of one of the flatter and more boring states in the country, Ozaukee County clearly would have topped the list.

Forbes’ rankings also gave significant weight to things such as parks, recreation programs and athletic opportunities. But what they didn’t know when they released the list June 30 is that the quality and quantity of athletic facilities currently available to Ozaukee County residents is about to get even better. That alone should earn it top billing on the Forbes list.

Sports complex

On July 2, the town of Cedarburg unveiled its support for a new major sports and athletic complex to be located in the town at Five Corners, just north of the city of Cedarburg. The new sports complex will be located on 95 acres near the southwest corner of Highway 60 and Washington Avenue, behind the Grafton State Bank and Town Hall on what was formerly known as the Prochnow Landfill.

The new facilities will feature a huge array of recreational opportunities for Cedarburg and Ozaukee County residents, including soccer, softball, baseball, football and archery. It will also boast playgrounds, shelters, hiking trails and batting cages. Finally, Cedarburg will have the facilities needed to host games and tournaments for area youth and adult sports leagues. It will serve as the gateway to Ozaukee County for hundreds of thousands of parents and athletes traveling here from all corners of the Midwest, many of whom are future county taxpayers.

Ozaukee County has been in desperate need of such a facility for decades, and the new complex will solve many of our athletic and recreational space needs for generations to come. A conceptual plan along with other details can be seen at www.town.cedarburg.wi.us. The new park will provide additional traffic for Cedarburg businesses, including both city of Cedarburg merchants and those locating within the town’s new Five Corners Master Plan area.

Many hurdles to clear

There are still many hurdles to be overcome and the park will not be built overnight. Various planning, fundraising and regulatory issues must first be addressed before construction can begin. Seven acres of the property was used as a landfill between 1945 and 1972. But such was also the case with Lime Kiln Park in Grafton and Mee-Kwon golf course in Mequon. The power to control title of the property - currently ready to be assigned by a special administrator for the estate of Marvin Prochnow - rests with the town of Cedarburg, the city of Cedarburg, Emerson Electric Corp., and Brunswick Corp. (now Mercury Marine). These four entities make up the responsible parties who must remediate or clean up the property, and they are all working with the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources to develop a plan to do so.

While the cost to clean up the property is not precisely known, the acquisition of title to the property and its cleanup is the subject of discussions between the city of Cedarburg and the town of Cedarburg. Much progress has been made in these negotiations, and it is the town’s fervent desire to present town, city and county residents with one of the biggest and most impressive sports facilities anywhere in Wisconsin. You can help make this dream a reality by attending an Open House at the Cedarburg Town Hall at Five Corners on Tuesday, July 15, between 4 p.m. and 8 p.m. to learn more and voice your support. This truly will be a monster gift from the community of Cedarburg to its children and grandchildren.

Only the beginning

The proposed sports complex is only the beginning. Less than two miles away, thousands of hockey players of all ages are excited at the prospect of a second ice rink being built in the county. The Ozaukee Youth Hockey Association and the Ozaukee Ice Association are in negotiation with Ozaukee County to acquire the Ozaukee Ice Center located at 5505 Pioneer Road on the Mequon/Cedarburg border.

The current facility is home to Concordia University’s men’s and women’s Division III college hockey teams, along with high school teams from Cedarburg, Homestead and Grafton. In addition, hundreds of Ozaukee County families also have young athletes involved in the Ozaukee Youth Hockey Association programs, resulting in sparse ice time availability and practice times as early as 5 a.m. and as late as midnight for some young athletes. The need for a second rink reached critical mass some years ago, and a solution in the form of a second rink built right next to the current rink appears to be a step closer to reality.

Once OYHA acquires the facility from the county, which it gifted to the county years ago, its plan is to partner with Concordia University to build the second facility and give the Concordia Falcons a dominant athletic presence in the heart of Ozaukee County. The resulting second rink will provide Ozaukee County with another premier destination for tournaments and sporting events, and give ample practice and ice time to users of all ages, including plenty of public skating time.

Unofficially best

It is a given that Forbes did not consider these huge two sports and athletic developments along with many other salient attributes of Ozaukee County when it nudged Hamilton County, Indiana to the No. 1 ranking on its list. As fresh water becomes the currency of the new millennium, Ozaukee County joins a short and distinguished list of communities living next to the world’s largest fresh water bank.

When you consider these things, it is no doubt safe to assume that whether or not you have children in area schools or athletic programs, Ozaukee County is now unofficially the best place in America to live and raise a family. With a little community support for the new sports complex and hockey facility, it will only be a matter of time before we make that first place ranking official.

Gary Wickert is an author, trial lawyer, and town of Cedarburg supervisor, who lives with his wife and two sons. He can be reached at garywickert@ameritech.net.

I had never met the man, though we had crossed paths before, and when I say "cross paths" I mean op-ed articles written by me in which I expressed my displeasure over votes or comments of his.

But, By George, the man was meeting with constituents down the street from my parent’s house, and what better time than the present to ask him why he voted against a bi-partisan effort to pass a new GI bill, which would cover four years of college for veterans who had served for three years.

I brought my mom along for moral support, not because I needed my mom per say, but a friend was necessary as I faced one of the most powerful Representatives in Congress. Congressman (F. James) Sensenbrenner was flanked by a studious looking cabal of Republican values, state Rep. Jim Ott, and state Sen. Alberta Darling.

I wondered if these three had not all been from the same party, would they still be meeting together to field questions?

I curiously watched Sensenbrenner answer concerns like a pro, and when his eyes darted across the card I was asked to fill out, I noticed a slight recognition in his face. He looked immediately to me, scanned the rest of the room, and then called out my name and address. I took the microphone, fully aware of the camera two feet away, and meekly asked my question, "What are your reasons for not supporting Senator Webb and Senator Hagel’s new GI bill?"

The answer amounted to the congressman not being in favor of any tax increase on the American people. I asked if a follow up question was OK. He smiled and nodded.

"The people who’d be paying for this though make, singly over $500,000 a year, and for married couples, $1,000,000 a year" I said.

The experienced Congressman stared at me for exactly three seconds before answering, "I’m against any tax increase."

You had to admire the guy for being consistent. After all, I couldn’t say, "But you authorized the war," because we actually were not taxed for that (never mind our debt for the next 100 years, the soaring gas prices and human life lost).

State Sen. Darling then helpfully chimed in, "We’ve organized tuition for soldiers from Wisconsin without any taxes," as if she’d just figured out a way to print $20 bills out of a sand-trap." I then asked, "Who pays for that?"

"The Wisconsin Department of Veterans Affairs," she replied with slight trepidation in her voice.

I responded, "That’s not going to cover four years of college," the word, "college" trailing off my lips. My Mom and I celebrated my cordial confrontation with some Dairy Queen, but later that night I started to wonder, "What if they did cover the whole four years?"

This was beside the point, but still I wondered. Did some World War II veterans stumble across an oil well, or perhaps a magical money tree, and were now donating the proceeds to all Wisconsin veterans?

I called Veterans Affairs in Madison the next day for answers. Apparently they did cover all four years and often even grad school. This was clearly an excellent program. "Who pays for this?" I excitedly asked.

The UW school system was the answer, and as I hung up the phone, I realized that Wisconsin residents indirectly pay for that through their taxes.

We should be proud of the WDVA and the UW School System for setting a nationwide example and seeing that our veterans are given the education they well deserve. But, let’s be clear. We do not decide to go to war as a state, but as a country. And it is the country’s responsibility to make sure veterans are taken care of whether we support a war or not.

President Bush, Senator McCain, and Congressman Sensenbrenner all did support this war with open arms, but do not feel it is their concern to see that all veterans who have served three years have a four year education at their respective state schools.

One of the greatest kept secrets of course is that education is one of the main ways to control the distribution of wealth in this country. Senator McCain, the recipient of a first class education at the Naval Academy came into service as an officer, yet expects young men and woman serving in the National Guard, Army, and Marines to have a career in the service without a college education.

President Bush and Congressman Sensenbrenner, who did not serve in Vietnam, would gladly continue to throw soldiers into harm’s way in a war that has now lasted longer than World War II, but without properly compensating them. It’s the Armed Services. Not the Armed Servants.

Chad Pentler is presently a graduate student. He lives in Mequon.

The fee, which raised Wisconsin taxes by $22 million, will now be used to balance the Wisconsin state budget.

Now Congressman Sensenbrenner is mad. He calls the deal, negotiated by Assembly Speaker Mike Huebsch (R-West Salem) and Senate Majority Leader Russ Decker (D-Weston) a "breach of faith with the people of Wisconsin" and a "fiscal shell game."

This turn of events leaves many Wisconsin conservatives scratching their heads in wonder: Congressman Sensenbrenner purports to be a foe of big government. So why is he complaining Wisconsin legislators aren’t spending his tax increase the way he wants them to?

On May 11, Wisconsin and the nation’s other states reached the implementation deadline for Real ID, the national identification card program authored by Sensenbrenner, the Fifth District’s 30-year incumbent.

After a lengthy staring match with the states, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) blinked, effectively granting the states until 2011, perhaps even 2018, to comply.

But the conflict isn’t over.

Real ID was born in controversy when Sensenbrenner attached the bill as a rider to a 2005 military appropriation bill. A rider is a provision that shares little in common with the original bill and is a favorite technique legislators use to drop earmarks into unrelated bills.

Worse yet, Real ID was voted on in the US Senate without a single hearing or debate.

Many conservatives, already bristling at the GOP’s irresponsible spending habits and expansion of government by 2005, revolted.

The Wall Street Journal accused Sensenbrenner and the Republican leadership of betraying its "federalist principles" yet again.

Real ID, as described by the Journal, effectively requires all 245 million license holders in the U.S. to "head down to the local Department of Motor Vehicles with certified source documents" - birth certificate or Social Security card - "to apply for the new standardized national ID. And people from states that don’t play ball won’t be able to use their licenses to board planes or enter federal buildings."

In effect, Real ID is an internal passport for Americans with a mandate to build, according to the Cato Institute, a "federal surveillance infrastructure" to track "every American, native-born and immigrant alike."

The Journal evoked images of totalitarian Germany, calling it the "show-us-your-papers Sensenbrenner approach" to internal security.

Since 2005, the rationale for Real ID has mutated as its proponents struggle to overcome bipartisan opposition. Initially it was an antiterrorism bill. It then became a technique to control illegal immigration. Then it was about preventing identity theft. Most recently a top DHS official suggested the ID could be used to control access to cold medications.

Reasons enough to oppose its implementation.

The lesson of DHS’s call for an ID to control access to cold medicine, warns Cato’s Jim Harper, "Once a national ID system is in place, the federal government will use it for tighter and tighter control of every American."

With Real ID, Jim Sensenbrenner has managed to unite left and right in opposition. Groups ranging from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) to Gun Owners of America oppose Real ID.

Wayne LaPierre, executive vice president of the National Rifle Association (NRA) warned Americans that a national ID system might soon be used to monitor your "credit history, your residential information, your banking history, your medical and mental health records, your marital status, your ATM withdrawals, turnpike use, library checkouts, movie rentals, pharmacy prescriptions, phone call records, and firearms by serial number and address. Imagine all that information encrypted in a hologram on your national ID card ... but a hologram you can’t read. Only higher authorities can read it."

"Never accept the idea," he concluded, "that surrendering freedom - any freedom - is the price of feeling safe."

Nineteen state legislatures have passed bills refusing to comply with Real ID, while Republicans in Congress work for its repeal. South Carolina’s Republican governor, Mark Sanford, considered suing the federal government over the unconstitutionality of Real ID.

Senate Republicans John Sununu and Lamar Alexander are working actively to roll it back. Their complaint? Sensenbrenner’s bill violates the GOP’s commitment to federalism, or states’ rights.

Conservatives have long complained about the abuse of unfunded mandates by the federal government. Real ID is among the most abusive unfunded mandates in recent history: Sensenbrenner’s bill appropriated between $40 and $60 million in federal funds, while estimates of the total cost passed on to the states range from $4 billion to over $20 billion.

With unfunded mandates like the Sensenbrenner Tax, federal legislators are able to hide the real cost of government by making the states raise taxes for them.

It is, to use Sensenbrenner’s own words, a "fiscal shell game" - the tax increase he secretly passed along to Wisconsin taxpayers - and a "breach of faith with the people of Wisconsin."

Proponents of Real ID suggest concerns over abuse of the system are unwarranted. But Americans were once promised Social Security numbers would not be used for identification purposes. Moreover, Real ID’s national database increases the likelihood of identity theft.

There are viable alternatives. For those who would use Sensenbrenner’s national ID to combat illegal immigration, Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan (Republican, First District) introduced in February an employment verification system to provide a "tested and effective way to immediately authenticate an employee’s legal status."

Ryan touts his proposal as an effective alternative to the "new ‘big brother,’ one-size-fits-all federal government database and national I.D. card."

Wisconsin voters should be angry enough that under Republicans the government grew by almost 50 percent between 2001 and 2007.

Now the same leaders who gave us $3 trillion in new debt and a massive expansion of Medicare are working hard to give us more unfunded government, this time at the expense of our privacy.

Next time you complain about Wisconsin’s high tax rates, remember the Sensenbrenner Tax. It’s one of many reasons Real ID needs to be repealed.

Jim Burkee, an Associate Professor of History at Concordia University Wisconsin, is challenging Jim Sensenbrenner in the Sept. 9 primary for Wisconsin’s Fifth Congressional District seat. The News Graphic invites Congressman Sensenbrenner to respond to this column.

all of the phony science, could it be

that man-made global warming

is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated

on the American people?

It sure sounds like it."

- Sen. James Inhofr on Senate Floor, July 28, 2003

The Apocalypse appears to have been cancelled. As new science and evidence of global warming misrepresentations and outright fraud are uncovered on almost a daily basis, well-intentioned but politically-motivated extremists from all corners of the globe are being forced to reassess the dire predictions of their environmental religion.

They’ve even had to rename global warming - it’s now called "climate change."

Last month, more than 31,000 scientists from across the county - including more than 9,000 Ph.Ds in fields such as atmospheric science, climatology, Earth science, environment and dozens of other specialties - signed a petition rejecting the so-called "consensus" on anthropogenic (man-made) global warming, the assumption that man-made greenhouse gases are having an effect on Earth’s climate.

It seems the sky isn’t falling after all.

A little history is in order. You may recall that in the 1970s there was a major global cooling crisis as well. Books such as "The Genesis Strategy" by Stephen Schneider and "Climate Change and World Affairs" by Crispin Tickell (both authors are now big global warming enthusiasts) warned about action needed by our government to prevent global cooling.

In 1975, Time magazine published a story about the coming of a new ice age, with dire predictions for the world’s food production.

That same year, Newsweek printed a similar article entitled "The Cooling World." It said, "The evidence in support of these predictions has now begun to accumulate so massively that meteorologists are hard-pressed to keep up with it."

Even the U.S. National Academy of Sciences drank the Kool-Aid (no pun intended) and concluded that political action was necessary.

Thirty-one years later, Newsweek admitted it was wrong. Oops.

The present global warming hysteria began in 1988. James Hansen, director of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, virtually invented global warming out of thin air (pun intended) when he testified before the U.S. Senate Committee on Science, making a big impression on the chair of that committee - a young senator named Al Gore.

Goddard said we had been wrong about global cooling and that he was "99 percent sure" greenhouse gases such as man-made CO2 (carbon dioxide) were causing global temperatures to rise instead.

Within a few months, many scientists were criticizing Hansen, who had instantly achieved rock star status in environmental circles, but the media circus and hysteria was already in full swing.

Shortly thereafter, the well-credentialed environmental expert Robert Redford held a press conference at his ranch in Sundance, Utah, proclaiming "it was time to stop research and begin acting."

Barbara Streisand and Meryl Streep jumped on the band wagon and actually made television appeals to "stop the warming."

Believe it or not, a bill was actually introduced in the Senate to "guarantee" Americans a stable climate.

Just about every liberal political ideology and agenda, from anticapitalism to socialism to redistribution of wealth to anti-Americanism, could now be vaunted as necessary to save the planet.

Politics overtook science.

Global warming was quickly blamed for virtually all of mankind’s problems.

John Brignell, retired professor of industrial instrumentation at the University of Southampton (http://en.wikipedia.org /wiki/University_of_Southampton), has a British website (www. numberwatch.co .uk/warmlist) that links to over 600 actual news stories blaming global warming for just about everything, including: human extinction, fashion disasters, flesh-eating disease, frostbite, gingerbread house collapses, glacial retreat, glacial growth, heart attacks, hypothermia deaths, a kitten boom, mammoth dung melt, Mt. Everest shrinking, the growth of plankton, the loss of plankton, rape, rioting, nuclear war, seals mating more, sex change, suicide, teenage drinking, and even world bankruptcy.

The global warming frenzy and media stampede was unstoppable. Environmentalists lapped up every drop, calling for immediate action.

Unbelievably, Al Gore won an actual Oscar for his error-filled "documentary," "An Inconvenient Truth" - forever denigrating the gold-plated britannium statuette.

He even scored a Nobel Prize for his global warming alarmism, which we now know feeds a Green money-making machine for him and his investors.

Corporations, desperate to avoid backlash from warming-duped consumers, began to offer "green" products and raised the global warming flag outside their headquarters.

Travelocity and other travel websites gave consumers the option of purchasing "carbon offsets" - ridiculous payments which supposedly offset a person’s "carbon footprint," which for jet-setting Al Gore are the size of Godzilla’s.

Global warming rose first began to wilt when the U.S. failed to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, the one-sided agreement which would have cost America trillions of dollars while, according to the alarmists’ own model, slowing the increase in average temperature by less than .07 of a degree Celsius, a number too small to measure.

The curtains were pulled back even further when much of the inaccurate science, speculation, and outright deception behind global warming were revealed.

It turns out that 98 percent of greenhouse gases are naturally-occurring water vapor. Of the remaining minor greenhouse gases (methane; chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) - compounds containing chlorine, fluorine and carbon, formerly used widely as refrigerants, propellants and cleaning solvents, and now banned - and CO2), 97 percent of the CO2 in the atmosphere is natural and from sources such as volcanic eruptions, decay of dead plant and animal matter, evaporation from the oceans and respiration.

The United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) authored a document titled "Climate Change 2001: The Scientific Basis," which quickly became the bible for global warming hysteria.

Many of the document’s authors now admit that anthropogenic (man-made) global warming (AGW) is based on models that don’t work.

Dr. Chris Landsea, a research meteorologist with the Hurricane Research Division of the Atlantic Oceanographic & Meteorological Laboratory at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and one of its scientific contributors, withdrew his participation in the Fourth Assessment Report claiming it had become more politics than science.

Steve McIntyre, a British mathematician, discovered serious flaws in papers and data used and cited by the IPCC. Douglas J. Keenan, an independent mathematical researcher, found "fabrications" and a lack of overall integrity in the report.

Last year, it was even uncovered that many of the scientists involved in the report were not in agreement with the study’s findings.

Adding insult to injury, Al Gore’s movie was revealed to contain more scientific errors and outright lies than a Hillary Clinton speech - as many as 35 at last count. Gore’s hockey stick chart of average temperatures over the millennia was exposed as a fraud and is now officially dead.

Footage of majestic Antarctic ice shelves dramatically calving into the ocean was recently revealed to actually be fake, computer-generated images spliced from the goofy 2004 Hollywood movie, "The Day After Tomorrow."

Gore’s movie overstated the effect of CO2 10 times greater than even the highest IPCC estimate, and falsely blamed Hurricane Katrina on our SUVs.

Gore claimed polar bears were dying because the ice cap was melting, but it turns out that a mere four bears had died in a storm and there are 25,000 polar bears alive today, compared to 5,000 in 1940.

A High Court judge in London, citing the movie’s many errors, has ordered the government-mandated showing of the film in English schools be accompanied by a political disclaimer.

Even those who persist in worshipping at the man-made global warming altar cite surface temperature records showing a paltry warming rate of only 0.17 degrees Celsius per decade since 1979.

However, the records from satellites and weather balloons tell a very different story - zero warming.

In addition, new evidence now indicates that Gore had it completely backwards - higher temperatures cause higher levels of CO2, not the other way around.

The earth always has and always will undergo cycles in its climate - driven by the sun, the oceans and other natural phenomena.

Most scientists agree that the climate we are in right now is not even a particularly warm climate relative to history.

The "skeptics" - a strange moniker for the thousands of respected environmental scientists whose nonpolitically-driven research shows the planet isn’t coming to an end - have won.

But the damage has already been done and the bus has apparently left the station, loaded with both Democrats and Republicans.

Under the bus you’ll find the American taxpayer.

Last month, President Bush announced his goal to stabilize greenhouse-gas emissions by 2025. To get there, Bush proposes new fuel-economy standards for autos and lower emissions from power plants built in the next 10 to 15 years.

Senators Joe Lieberman and John Warner have proposed legislation that would cut emissions even further - 66 percent by 2050.

No one has a clue how to do this.

Because there is no alternative energy source to achieve these massive reductions, we are faced with the unpleasant prospect of having to get by with less energy and tripling our current gas prices.

The political fallout from the global warming scam is so great that all of our presidential candidates have become global warming ventriloquists so as to not miss out on the "Green vote."

The sad irony of cancelling doomsday is that many of the political measures claimed necessary to "save the Earth" constitute good stewardship of our planet even without the extremism.

Saving energy, conserving resources, recycling, and reducing emissions - they are all sensible things to do, even if the planet isn’t going to explode.

The problem is, environmentalists and politicians lose both credibility and the people’s respect if they claim the sky is falling, and it really isn’t.

Gary Wickert is an author, trial lawyer, and town of Cedarburg supervisor, who lives with his wife and two sons. He can be reached at garywickert@ameritech.net.

Felix is the 8-year-old Cedarburg boy who has battled brain and spinal cancer since April 2007. Becky is his mother.

They have graciously allowed the News Graphic to report on Felix’s fight over the past 14 months, and the efforts of family, friends, Thorson Elementary School and the Cedarburg community to assist them in whatever ways they could.

Not everyone would allow such public intrusion into such personal travails.

It has been a long fight with many highs and an equal number of lows. Unfortunately, the most recent news last month, as reported in Tuesday’s edition, was another low. Tumors have spread to Felix’s liver, spleen and other organs.

In lives full of trials and setbacks for all of us, the story of the Bollers puts such things into perspective. The story of one little boy reminds us that, for most of us, our troubles aren’t really all that serious.

Thank you, Felix, for that.

We wish you well, young man, and may this summer be long and warm and full of blue skies for you.

You remain in our hearts and our prayers.

Dave Rank is managing editor of the News Graphic.

The Metropolitan Milwaukee Area has already met the federal ozone standard, and deserves to be removed from the ozone nonattainment list.

Milwaukee, Ozaukee, Washington, Racine and Waukesha counties met the ozone standard in 2006, and continued to meet the standard throughout 2007. Gov. Doyle recognized our progress toward cleaner air, and submitted those counties for redesignation to attainment last year.

So why won’t the EPA grant the regulatory relief these communities earned through reduced pollution?

Those five counties are being held hostage by a single monitor placed at the state line in Kenosha County. Worse yet, that ozone monitor doesn’t even measure Wisconsin air quality - it measures what blows across the state line from Illinois.

You may be wondering why an ozone monitor in Kenosha County sets the regulatory standard for the entire metropolitan area. It’s a great question.

The Clean Air Act imposes ozone regulations on all the counties in a geographical region based upon the ozone levels detected at the area’s worst monitor, which in this case, is the monitor located near the state border in Kenosha County.

However, the Clean Air Act also establishes ozone nonattainment boundaries based upon metropolitan areas defined by the U.S. Census Bureau. As a result, Milwaukee, Waukesha, Ozaukee, Washington and Racine counties are all lumped together as one region under the Clean Air Act.

You will notice that Kenosha County is missing from that list of five counties.

Indeed, the Clean Air Act suggests that Kenosha County should not be included in the Metropolitan Milwaukee area for ozone nonattainment purposes because the Census Bureau places Kenosha County in the Chicago Metropolitan area.

Community leaders, businesses, workers and lawmakers should be outraged that the misapplication of Clean Air Act policies is causing these five counties to continue suffering under burdensome ozone regulations despite having met the federal air quality standard.

The businesses in those counties have significantly reduced air pollution, and deserve to be designated as having attained the ozone standards under Clean Air Act.

It’s that simple.

It’s time to remove the barriers to economic expansion and job creation in Milwaukee, Ozaukee, Washington, Racine and Waukesha counties by rewarding decades of hard work to reduce air emissions.

We should not allow an ill-placed ozone monitor that measures Illinois’s air quality to deny the relief that Southeast Wisconsin has earned. Each and every monitor in the five-county region - including those located where people actually live and work - are meeting the standard.

Wisconsin officials need to take a stand on this issue.

Using what for all practical purposes is an Illinois monitor to impose regulatory burdens on Wisconsin counties meeting the ozone standard is no longer acceptable. These counties have suffered for too long under flawed policies that burden the entire region with expensive, uncompetitive and unwarranted regulatory mandates.

We have made great progress over the years in lowering ozone levels, and will continue to see more success as new "on the books" pollution reductions are implemented in the near future.

Our regulatory relief is long overdue.

It’s time to follow the Clean Air Act and designate Kenosha County as a separate ozone nonattainment area apart from the rest of the Metropolitan Milwaukee Area.

(Scott Manley is the Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce environmental policy director.)

- Franklin Delano Roosevelt, on signing the original
G.I Bill for returning veterans

The Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA) is leading an effort to pass a new GI Bill of educational benefits for veterans. What is the bill, what will it cost, where do Wisconsin’s U.S. senators and members of Congress stand? (www.iava.org)

The "New G.I. Bill" would improve the educational benefits available to veterans who have served since 9-11-01 by increasing them to match the highest public university tuition in a given recipient’s state and providing a monthly housing stipend. The intent is to make the benefits of the New G.I. Bill roughly equivalent to the benefits provided to returning veterans after WW II. (www.gibill2008.org/about.html)

The World War II-era G.I. Bill is estimated to have returned $7 to the economy (in increased productivity and economic activity, and increased tax receipts) for every dollar spent on funding. The New GI Bill is supported by all major veterans organizations.

Paul Rieckhoff, executive director of IAVA, says improving GI Bill benefits for veterans should not be a controversial issue. "Many people say they support the troops, and we believe they do," Rieckhoff said. "Now it is time for them to put their money where their mouth is."

Two billion dollars a year is needed for the program, which equals less than the cost of one week of the continuing occupation of Iraq.

To offset this cost, the legislation includes a surtax of just under half a percent, that would apply to adjusted gross income (AGI) over a million dollars for married couples and over half a million dollars for other taxpayers.

New figures from Citizens for Tax Justice show that 3 out of 1,000 taxpayers would be affected by such a tax. The total surtax would amount to only about 7 percent of the massive tax cuts on dividends, capital gains, large estates, and income those persons have received since the start of the invasion and occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. (http://www.ctj.org/)

Robert S. McIntyre, director of Citizens for Tax Justice, said "Lawmakers who oppose this proposal will prove that they really do value tax cuts for the wealthy over all else."

(I don’t know if this proves that those politicians value tax cuts for the wealthy over all else. But it sure proves that they value tax cuts for the wealthy during wartime over providing educational assistance to returning veterans.)

The U.S. Congress passed the New G.I. Bill (HR5740) with a vote of 256 to 166 on May 16. The U.S. Senate passed the New G.I. Bill (S22) with a vote of 75 to 22 on May 21. All except two of Wisconsin’s elected delegation of 10 U.S. senators and members of Congress voted for the New G.I. Bill.

Which two voted no?

1. Though he had plenty of opportunity to demonstrate his lifelong pro-war beliefs with action, during the 12 years of U.S. combat in Vietnam, F. James Sensenbrenner has no military experience. He loves photo ops with troops in uniform and wears a flag pin in his lapel. Sensenbrenner’s Web site has a passage that asserts, "During times of war and conflict, our nation has relied heavily on the men and women of our military to protect us and our allies The very least America can do in return is provide our veterans, reservists, and national guardsmen with opportunities to find employment, so that they can take care of themselves and their families."

Sensenbrenner has demonstrated repeatedly that he intends to do the very least for returning veterans.

He supports tax credits for businesses that hire veterans.

F.J. Sensenbrenner voted against the G.I. Bill.

2. Paul Ryan is of a later generation, and he also has no military experience. Ryan declares on his Web site, "We owe a continuing debt of gratitude to our nation’s veterans. Our thanks can be expressed in large part by how we care for them."

Paul Ryan voted against the New G.I. Bill.

Senator Chuck Hagel’s Web site has an op-ed co-written by Senator James Webb (Va.) and Senator Chuck Hagel (Neb.) endorsing the new G.I. Bill. It’s under "News Room," in "speeches/op-ed’s," November 2007.

It’s really worth reading this article by two combat infantrymen who fought in the same war and have both become U.S. senators. Chuck Hagel is a member of the Republican Party, while Jim Webb is a member of the Democratic Party.

Senator and presidential candidate John McCain has expressed opposition to the New G.I. Bill. On May 21, John McCain did not bother to vote.

Senators and presidential candidates Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton voted for the New G.I. Bill.

Now that both the Senate and the House of Representatives have passed it by very wide margins, the New G.I. Bill (S22/HR5740) goes to President Bush for his signature.

Clyde Winter lives on the town of Cedarburg farm founded by his ancestors in 1848. His "Hearts and Minds" blog can be found at http://clydewinter.wordpress.com.

I am most proud of the fact that the Synergy board engaged in a very open process that included many meetings with community leaders and employers. While this open process may have taken longer and required many more hours of discussion and deliberation, there is no doubt that it helped build community support for the decision to affiliate with a larger system. The hard reality is that a health care system as small as Synergy could not survive in a rapidly consolidating and increasingly competitive marketplace.

To help find the right affiliation partner, Mr. Banaszynski and our community board pledged to adhere to these guiding principles:

n Maintain a high degree of local governance and decision making for citizens of Washington County.

n Improve the quality of care and local access to expanded services.

n Control future healthcare costs.

n Ensure shared mission, vision and values.

I believe these principles were followed in developing the affiliation agreement with Froedtert & Community Health. Although the community board started the affiliation discussions by moving in a different direction, the board members listened to the community and voted to open the process to all interested health care systems. So the ultimate decision to affiliate with Froedtert & Community Health was really a community decision.

The agreement to affiliate with Froedtert delivered on the guiding principles in several important ways:

The agreement maintains a high degree local governance and control by retaining the boards of directors for St. Joseph’s Hospital, the West Bend Clinic and SynergyHealth Foundation. Two community members of the hospital board will also serve on the Froedtert & Community Health board in addition to a third member from the community who will serve on both the hospital and Froedtert & Community Health boards.

The agreement provides us with an enhanced ability to improve the quality of care and access to services for Washington County residents. Froedtert & Community Health has committed to building St. Joseph’s into a destination hospital and expanding and growing service lines for the hospital and clinic, including in cancer, cardiovascular, primary care and other specialty services. They have also committed to recruiting new physician specialists to the community and expediting access to the unique specialty care provided by the Medical College of Wisconsin faculty members, both locally and at the Froedtert campus.

St. Joseph’s Hospital and the West Bend Clinic will be part of the larger financial base of Froedtert & Community Health, providing greater access to capital, purchasing power and other economies of scale.

Froedtert & Community Health will support local community missions by investing in scholarships, community outreach and the accelerated development of local health care services by the clinic and hospital.

Once again, I want to thank and congratulate our president, Greg Banaszynski, and our community board members for a job well done. The community owes them a debt of gratitude for their many long hours and total dedication to serving the interests of the people of West Bend and Washington County. I am proud to have served with them.

(Tom Johnson is chairman of SynergyHealth System.)

It is a place where the privilege and responsibility of being a parent is taken seriously and worked at diligently; a place where many of our children still walk to school - yes, even when it’s cold.

Family is priority.

Ozaukee County is a community whose roads are not more heavily traveled at midnight on Saturday evening than at 9 a.m. on Sunday morning. It is perhaps one of the last bastions of our country where the commercial aspects of Christmas haven’t eclipsed the Reason for the Season.

Residents wish each other a Merry Christmas - and nobody is offended.

You notice these things if you move here from Wauwatosa or Shorewood, but they really hit you over the head if you move here from another state - or country. It is almost like going back in time, to another place, to another era where things seemed simpler and friendlier.

It is America at its finest, and for many of us, it is why we live here.

Within Ozaukee County, the town of Cedarburg opens its town board meetings with a pledge of allegiance to a nation "under God."

Everyone stands. We face the flag. Hands are placed over hearts. It makes this town board member feel like a citizen of a very special place.

In Estes Park, Colorado, a community identical in size to Cedarburg, a board member who refused to stand up and recite the Pledge of Allegiance during town board meetings due to a conflict he had with the words, "under God," was recalled. Councilman David Habecker maintained that the pledge constituted a violation of the "separation of church and state."

Last week, three eighth-grade students at Dilworth-Glyndon-Felton Junior High School in northwestern Minnesota were suspended for sitting during the Pledge. They gave no reason.

A quick history lesson is in order. The Pledge of Allegiance was written in 1892 by Francis Bellamy, a Baptist minister.

Bellamy’s original Pledge read as follows:

"I pledge allegiance to my Flag and the Republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."

Bellamy considered placing the word, ‘equality,’ in his pledge, but knew that the state superintendents of education on his committee were not keen on equality for women and African Americans.

Bellamy circulated material which read, "Let the flag float over every school-house in the land and the exercise be such as shall impress upon our youth the patriotic duty of citizenship."

On Columbus Day in October 1892, the Pledge of Allegiance was repeated by more than 12 million public school children throughout the country.

Fast forward to the year 1940. Lillian and William Gobitis, two Jehovah’s Witness siblings from Minersville, Penn., filed suit after being expelled from school for refusing to salute the flag during the Pledge of Allegiance. At that time the Pledge didn’t even contain the words, "under God."

Interestingly, in those days, the flag salute began with the hand over the heart and then, as the person began reciting the words "to the flag," the arm would be extended, palm upwards, toward the flag. This gesture, which had been in place since the 1890s, was later eliminated because of its similarity to the Nazi salute.

The Gobitis siblings refused to salute the flag because it conflicted with their Jehovah’s Witness understanding of Exodus 20 - that one should not worship or bow down to any "graven image" of God.

The Supreme Court held that the compelled flag salute did not infringe on religious liberty.

Three years later, however, the Gobitis decision was overturned in the court’s 1943 decision in West Virginia v. Barnette. A West Virginia statute, which had been enacted specifically because of the Gobitis decision, required recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance in public schools, and punished unwilling students with expulsion and their parents with fines and possible jail time.

The court reversed itself, holding that a state could not compel students to say the Pledge. National unity could be fostered by persuasion, but not by compulsion.

In 1951, the Knights of Columbus adopted a resolution to amend the Pledge of Allegiance as recited at its assemblies by adding the words "under God."

The addition was inspired by the closing portion of President Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, "We here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain - that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom"

In 1954, a total of 17 resolutions were introduced into the U.S. House of Representatives to similarly amend the Pledge of Allegiance. One was adopted by both Houses of Congress, and it was signed by President Eisenhower on Flag Day, June 14, 1954, who publicly thanked the Knights of Columbus.

There were few problems with the word "God" in our Pledge, until 1989, when the U.S. Supreme Court was asked by the American Civil Liberties Union to not only declare the Pledge of Allegiance unconstitutional, but also our many references to "In God We Trust" on our money and public buildings.

In County of Allegheny v. American Civil Liberties Union, the Court decided that it is only government’s allegiance to a particular sect, denomination or creed that is prohibited by the First Amendment. While government may not display the Christian manger scene, it may open the Supreme Court and Congress with a nonsectarian prayer, declare a National Day of Prayer, refer to God on its coins and money and include the words "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance.

In 2000, atheist Michael Newdow, a California physician with a law degree, a 5-year-old daughter in the Elk Grove school system, and an axe to grind with monotheistic religion, decided he wasn’t happy about students at his daughter’s school standing to say the pledge each morning, even though students were allowed to opt out.

Newdow challenged the law and the circus known as the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals declared our Pledge of Allegiance to be unconstitutional and in violation of the First Amendment. The U.S. Supreme Court quickly overturned the controversial decision.

The First Amendment reads, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof."

The first portion is known as the "establishment clause," and the second, as the "free exercise" clause. These clauses were designed to harmonize, but they frequently conflict.

The free exercise clause guarantees citizens the right to freely exercise their religious beliefs, or not. It forbids the outlawing of any religious belief, but not necessarily conduct related to those beliefs, such as polygamy, the avoidance of secular education by the Amish, wearing yarmulkes in the military, and certain types of discrimination.

On the other hand, the establishment clause prohibits the government from setting up an official state church, forcing or influencing a person to go to or remain away from church against his or her will, or forcing anyone to profess a belief or disbelief in any religion.

As you can see, the words "separation of church and state" do not appear in the First Amendment - or anywhere else in the Constitution for that matter. The phrase comes from a Jan. 1, 1802 letter from Thomas Jefferson to the Danbury Baptist Association of Connecticut.

Connecticut still had religion taxes and the Baptists were objecting. They wrote to Jefferson because they knew he understood their concerns.

In his reply, written from France, Jefferson merely referenced "building a wall of separation between Church and State." He didn’t say how high the wall would be.

Former U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist - a Wisconsin native - has written opinions stating, "The ‘wall of separation between church and State’ is a metaphor based on bad history, a metaphor which has proved useless as a guide to judging. It should be frankly and specifically abandoned."

But the metaphor stuck, and is often inaccurately cited as a license to keep God out of the public eye.

Freedom is a marvelous thing. If David Habecker doesn’t want to stand up during the Pledge, he is free not to. At the same time, the residents of Estes Park are free to vote him out of office for refusing to do so. As I stand before each Town of Cedarburg Board meeting, with my hand over my heart, proudly reciting the words "one nation, under God", I do not do so in derogation of or with animosity toward my Jewish, Muslim, or atheist friends and fellow citizens. Rather, I do so, knowing that regardless of whose sensibilities might be "offended" by my exercise of this right, I enjoy the freedom, protected by the Constitution, to acknowledge the Creator of the universe as the benefactor of this great country and my community here in Ozaukee County. And I do so confident in the simple but often-misunderstood legal truth that the First Amendment grants all of us the freedom of religion, but guarantees none of us a freedom from religion.

The first policy is the Wisconsin Farm Use-Value Law, the purpose of which is to slow or prevent the rapid loss of farms in Wisconsin. It accomplishes this by taxing farmland for its value as farmland, not for its value in some other use, such as a residential subdivision, shopping center or theme park. An important rationale behind this well-intentioned law was that farmland as a whole is the only developed property that paid substantially more in taxes than it used in government services. The motivation for the law was that taxing farm land for its value in some other hypothetical use would inevitably and quickly force its loss as farm land when development moved into an area, simply because no one could afford to pay the escalating taxes while continuing to farm.

The federal and state Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program (CREP) is the second policy, a perennial feature of the Farm Bill currently under consideration. The purpose of CREP is to encourage the restoration, retention and protection of wetlands and of stream and lake (riparian) buffers on farms. These features are of marginal direct economic value as farmland, but financial pressures often make it necessary to keep them in productive service as pasture or cropland. These various government programs encourage farm owners to restore and protect these ecologically significant features by providing incentives to take them out of agricultural production.

With Wisconsin’s farm use-value law, only those portions of the farm that the assessor feels are currently in actual use to grow crops or as pasture are assessed for farm use value. Other portions of the farm, such as rock outcrops, wood lots, or swamps, potholes, stream and lake banks, are considered to be land "not in agricultural use," and are thus assessed for their "market value" in some use other than as part of the farm.

If your farm is not currently in the sights of the developers, those wetlands and riparian buffers among your cultivated fields will have a market value which you may be able to bear with your farming income. But if the developers are salivating for your farm, the taxes on those bogs, potholes, stream buffer strips and obsolete pasture that you can’t sell even if you wanted to, will skyrocket beyond belief. Currently, the actual taxes per acre on wooded riparian buffers between plowed fields in some regions of Wisconsin have risen to 25 times their use-value taxation if they were used as pasture.

Only the CRP and CREP wetlands and riparian buffer protection programs qualify for use-value taxation in Wisconsin. Unfortunately, other valuable programs, such as the Wetlands Reserve Program, are not on the qualifying list. If a farm owner takes land out of production and enrolls it in the Wetlands Reserve Program, those acres will be subject to unlimited increases in taxes, depending solely on how badly developers want to get the farm. A farm owner who has chosen to voluntarily initiate protection of wetlands and riparian buffers, or who did so before the CREP program was even a gleam in the guvmint’s eye, will also be subject to those unlimited future tax increases.

The most appalling catch-22 is that farmers who have protected wetlands and buffers voluntarily, at no cost to taxpayers, cannot now enroll those wetlands and buffers in the qualifying CREP program. And the infuriating reason is that the farmer is already doing exactly what the government wants him to do. So the farm owner who voluntarily protects wetlands and streams gets double whacked. He doesn’t get any annual subsidies. But even worse, he gets taxed 25 times what the guy collecting the subsidies gets taxed.

What’s the solution for this farm owner’s frustration? Either sell the whole farm to developers. Or, if it is still possible, tear up the buffers, repair the fences, and run the cows there again. If he does that, ironically, after several years he can qualify for enrollment in the CREP program and collect the initial and annual payments for taking that farmland out of production. And, of course, that way he will also retain the use-value taxation, and thus save the farm.

That’s what I mean by an unfortunate interaction between two government policies that are administered in a way that defeats the intent of both policies. And it’s a pretty ridiculous example of the federal and state governments punishing, with both hands, a conscientious farm owner for doing, at no cost to taxpayers, exactly what the government would gladly pay another to do.

Of course, another option would be for the government to fix this mistake. Not a bad idea. The future results of not doing so are both ominous and insidious for wetlands and riparian buffer protection on Wisconsin farms, and for the protection of those farms themselves. The Feds should allow enrollment in CREP of voluntary, previously established buffers and wetlands protection, even if initial and annual subsidies are not paid for them. Alternatively, Wisconsin courts, legislators, and/or administrators should require that those equivalent voluntary buffers and wetlands which were previously established on Wisconsin farms be classified the same, for tax purposes, as those which were established and maintained by the payment of subsidies. If neither of those just and reasonable minor reforms is forthcoming, then, simply in the interest of justice, the CREP program should be scrubbed from either the currently proposed National Farm Bill or from the Wisconsin Farm Use-Value Law.

References:

www.wisconsinwetlands.org/taxes.htm

2006 Wisconsin Conservation Congress Advisory Question 68, approved by a five to one margin. http://clydewinter.wordpress.com

Clyde Winter lives on the town of Cedarburg farm founded by his ancestors in 1848. His "Hearts and Minds" blog can be found at http://clydewinter.wordpress.com.

A lot has happened in the last two years. And somehow not. Those who say change is the only constant should check the current in Cedar Creek. Time marches forward but only if they close the street for it.

More on that later. Here are some things that I’ve noticed about the past two years, either because of the dramatic change or pause:

The campaign for president is still going on with no discernable end in sight. In 2006, I was already tired of the campaign and had had more than enough of the candidates. I still am.

The clock is gone from the Piggly Wiggly in Cedarburg. It’s been replaced with timeless public service reminders.

People who complain that there are too many furniture stores in the area should reconsider their argument. Village Furniture on Main Street in Cedarburg has been replaced by a gym. Now, instead of furniture, people can work out in the picture windows to give the tourists a new kind of performance art. It’s kinda like Venice Beach meets Antiques Road Show.

Speaking of gyms, local legend Bobby G. was loud and loquacious at Wisconsin Health and Fitness. Bobby never disappoints as he’s managed to change and remain constant at simultaneously. He’s still loud and overbearing but now he’s at Form & Fitness where earplugs remain popular.

The most talked about, highly-anticipated new structure in southeastern Wisconsin opened. People oohed and aaahed over it while it was being built and now that it’s open, no one is disappointed. No, it’s not the Calatrava Art Museum in downtown Milwaukee it’s Costco in Grafton.

While the community has grown, community banks have become endangered. Both Ozaukee Bank and Grafton State Banks have been Harris-ed.

Global warming has been hibernating. We endured near-record snowfalls in the winter and are now enjoying a milder winter this spring.

Of interest to the community caf-fiends, David sold the Java House. Alterra is brewing in Grafton. Starbucks opened in Cedarburg and Grafton while the Cedarburg Coffee Pot has gone loco. There are more options than ever to stop and smell the latte.

Cedarburg High School needs a basketball coach again.

Wisconsin’s beer and brandy enthusiasts have discovered wine.

On the entertainment front, two years ago, Miley Cyrus was relatively unknown, much less overexposed.

On the local entertainment front, Don Levy and his band of committed committee members has literally revived the Rivoli Theater. Maybe these guys can’t act, but boy do they know how to entertain. Due to their fundraising and ongoing maintenance efforts, the Rivoli has been restored to a dazzling gem that lights up the small town night sky.

It’s been two more years since the Milwaukee Bucks and Milwaukee Brewers last appeared in the playoffs.

Prince Fielder was eating meat and hitting home runs.

Brett Favre retired and cried. I thought about how far away my retirement is and I cried.

This is still a great place for volunteers. There’s something about this area that makes people volunteer and help out others. At Lasata, food pantries, voting booths, soccer coaches it’s really unbelievable.

Speaking of soccer, two years ago I didn’t understand it. That has not changed. When I’m not yelling to my daughter to leave her zone, I’m the worst flagman in history. At least our treats are top-notch.

There has been a lot of progress in organizing the efforts to attract and advance business in the area. OED (Ozaukee County Economic Development Corporation) is organized, rebranded and helped out by many organizations, businesses and individuals.

Grafton, of course, is leading the way. Besides the aforementioned Costco, Best Buy, Dick’s Sporting Goods and Aurora Medical Center are on the horizon. They used to be singing the blues - now it’s practically the home of the blues.

Grafton has managed to rebrand itself by attracting development to ease the tax burden while it progresses.

While Cedarburg has maintained its small-town charm, it needs to thrive for future generations. Cedarburg needs to figure out how to master this challenge of balancing of progress and preservation.

In the meantime, we can all be proud of having the greenest industrial park in the nation. Talk about eco-friendly, after years of discussion and debate, it’s still a field.

Jack Henke lives in Cedarburg with his wife, two kids, two cats and a dog. He is president/creative director of Henke Creative Strategic Marketing, also in Cedarburg.

Oftentimes, legislators put out ideas to groups they believe are supportive of their stances on issues in order to open a dialog on the wording of a bill that may be introduced. I have done this in the past and received valuable feedback that has contributed positively to the legislative process.

It has been an unfortunate surprise to see that rather than sit down and discuss a concern face-to-face with a state representative who has a 100 percent voting record on their behalf, Wisconsin Right To Life chooses to launch a series of robocalls into my district, which generated a whopping three phone calls to my office within a week of McBride’s column, and those were from some sweet-seasoned citizens who were more confused than anything else. I was able to correct the misinformation with them and suggest they ask WRTL why their valuable membership dues are being wasted in this manner.

If you want this idea to go away, why do you keep putting it in the press? Why not just sit down and discuss what the pros and cons are so we can determine a best course of action? I have an obligation to serve my constituents and I have received a great deal of feedback that the current system needs to be examined. Please know I am in no way looking to harm any group that I fully support with my votes on the floor.

Jessica, you have based your rant on press releases and sound bites that are at least two weeks old rather than practicing some real journalism and calling me firsthand about the things I have changed. That’s how the process works.

You may want to include in your pillow talk with Paul a question on the e-mails he sends out. I have a dandy one he sent me if you’d like to read it. The last line reads, "You need real competition in the fall. Let’s see if we can arrange that." How would you interpret that? Is Paul still upset I endorsed J.B. Van Hollen for attorney general over him? Paul never even asked for my endorsement.

I’m hoping both of you realize you are not helping yourselves or the causes you claim to care about. I’d be happy to sit down with both of you to discuss your concerns. I’ll buy the coffee. I suggest decaf.

(Rep. Don Pridemore is a Republican who represents the 99th Assembly District and lives in the town of Erin.)