A Medical Mishap

I suspect that this is a hoax, or John Conyers needs to fire his staff.   Apart from the typos mentioned in Tapper's post and the subsequent smarmy comments, there's also the fact that the link to Conyers' website doesn't work as posted (the redirect works when the 'C' isn't capitalized but it's actually www.conyers.house.gov) . 

In any case, the Krugman post it links to makes a valid point.  One of the primary priorities of the Obama administration should be reforming the healthcare system.  A functional health care system would save lives and bolster the economy.  The Surgeon General might well play a roll in shaping and selling needed reforms.

In Sanjay Gupta's highest profile appearance on the overall state of the U.S. health care system, he made an ass of himself trying to discredit a man calling for reform.

Overture to the University?

It's official.  The Overture Center is for sale. . . for a buck.  The Overture Development Corporation can't handle the center's remaining $28 million debt and wants to give the center away in exchange for financial security.  Unfortunately, the intended recipient, the City of Madison, isn't very keen on handling the debt.  The offer to sell doesn't appear to be exclusive, however, and other potential buyers are bound to come up.  Apart from some yet-to-be-formed rescue entity, the obvious alternative would be the UW - Madison.  It's unlikely, but interesting.

There's certainly precedent.  The UW - Green Bay has owned the Weidner Center for over 15 years.  While the UW - Madison was tossing together the Humanities Building, forty years ago, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign built the Krannert Center, a performing arts center almost the size of Overture in a metropolitan area that's still less than half the size of Madison.  But these were centers built by universities on their own initiative.  There are plenty of reasons a university purchase of Overture might not work.

The UW - Madison's operating budget is ten times the size of the city's but that doesn't mean it's any better able to absorb that much new debt.  Even if the UW System weren't in line for another round of budget cuts, it's doubtful the legislature would acquiesce to the Madison campus putting $28 million on the state tab. 

The debt would have to be retired with private funds and, though the university's donor pool is larger than the city's, it isn't untapped.  The UW is already working on overhauling its own arts facilities.  Replacement is still the most practical option for the crumbling Mosse Humanities Building and Overture's part-time concert hall couldn't come close to absorbing the School of Music's 300-plus annual performances.  Yet the fund for a new concert structure stands at $20 million and, with $18 million to go, the music school doesn't need the competition.  This goes for the Art Department's new building project as well.

Add to that the necessary operating subsidy for a center of Overture's size when the university's existing arts programs are already underfunded and there's a substantial, probably insurmountable financial hurdle. 

Still, the possibilities are intriguing.  Plans for the new concert halls are modest and there are no plans at all to address the shortcomings of the theatres in Vilas Hall.  For $28 million (and one)  the University could secure occasional use of much larger venues than it would build for its own programs.  Ownership of a massive world-class facility could also go a long way toward raising the profile of the University's arts programs at a time when they need to reach out to the community.

The ODC's timeframe is cramped.  They want an answer by the first quarter of this year.  In the short term, the corporation is burning through 200 grand a month in interest payments and faces forclosure if the buyers balk.  It's important to remember that, in the long-term, the Overture Center will be fine.  It's larger than the old Civic Center but the city's a lot bigger than it was 30 years ago, too.  It's still growing.  If Madison's government lags behind that growth a bit, maybe it's time for the University to step in and take a larger role in the city's cultural life, if it can.

Update 1/8/09:  So it turns out I was off-base fretting over the debt.  Apparently the ODC is planning on taking care of that themselves.

Why not invite David Duke?

Like a lot of gay people, I've been fuming lately about President Elect Obama's decision to invite Pastor Rick Warren to deliver the invocation at his inauguration.   Yet again, the party establishment  would prefer that we keep it down in front of the christianists.  The right wing loves to see dissension in Obama's big hopey family and, besides, we're told, the President Elect is just trying to include diverse viewpoints.

Nonsense, the showcasing of Rick Warren at the Presidential Inauguration is a slap in the face to the GLBT community, particularly coming on the heels of Proposition 8.  There's no place in a national celebration for the type of demeaning bigotry that Warren espouses and, if the Obama Administration can't figure that out, then they should pay the political price.

No, I'm not against diversity.  This is a vast country populated by people of countless races, religions and creeds and I'm glad to see that reflected in the inauguration of our leader but, as 300 million people don't fit on a stage, I'm pretty confident there will be limits.

Choices had to have been made about what people and viewpoints to highlight.  Apparently, the choice was made to give one of the most prominent positions in the ceremony to man who likened same-sex relationships to incest and pedophilia. 

I would really like for the President Elect to think about his relationship with his wife and how he would feel if somebody placed it on the same level as the sexual victimization of a child.  Then, perhaps, he'd understand why the gay community thinks Rick Warren's viewpoint is best kept to himself.

You may interpret this as an attack on Joe the Plumber

The guy has been completely full of crap from the time he made up that ridiculous yarn about buying a business he couldn't possibly have afforded (or worked for) that, in any event, made less than half what he claimed it did.  (He's alright on the name thing, though. I know people who go by their middle names.)  The point isn't so much that the story is BS as that, in any credible scenario, Joe is much better off with Obama's tax plan.  

Now Joe the foreign affairs expert claims that an Obama presidency will mean the destruction of Israel.  

The McCain campaign latched onto Samuel "Joe" Wurzelbacher like a lamprey, desperately hoping to exploit his cred as an average, everyday working man.  I don't buy it.  Regular people tend to know what the hell they're talking about when they open their mouths.

The World Doesn't Work

The famed $700-billion bailout plan, Largely as a throw to taxpayers having trouble swallowing a plan using hundreds of billions of dollars of their money to prop up banks run by executives who make more in a year than most people earn in a lifetime, contained restrictions on the compensation that could be offered to executives of companies that accepted the money.  It was more a punitive measure than a constructive means of solving the credit crisis.  Lavish as they are, executive compensation figures still pale in comparison to the shear scale of the problems facing the global economy.

That being said,  when Alan Greenspan made his little admission last week that the world doesn't work quite the way he thought it did.  He said he'd been working under the assumption that institutions would act in their own self-interest in a way that protects their shareholders. 

Could it be that, as compensation packages became more and more larded with extravagant bonuses and golden parachutes, the interests of managing executives became dangerously decoupled from those of the shareholders?

Conservatives have often pushed to grant corporations the legal rights and protections the constitution affords people but it's important to remember that they're not actually people.   They're large groups of people and it's entirely possible for some of them to act against the best interests of the rest.  The consequences of this are worst when those people happen to be in charge.

Thanks, I guess

I just had to comment on this article by Christian Schneider, largely because it's not the sort of thing one would expect to see coming from a conservative think-tank.  Milwaukee is apparently again feeling the slow creep or urban exodus and, as crime fears rise and condo projects falter, Schneider is admirably concerned for the future of our state's largest city.  He hits on an interesting solution for urban revitalization, namely "The Gays!"

As a card-carrying Madison homo, I'm pleased, if a bit bemused ("Gay" is only to be used as a noun ironically, Christian.) .  It's nice to see that some conservatives have stopped peaking into our bedroom windows long enough to realize that the rest of the house is rather well kept. That said, there's a little more to it than just inviting the friends of Dorothy to fix up a neighborhood or two.

Schneider is talking about the "creative class" ala Richard Florida and frets over Milwaukee's relative disadvantage in attracting creative bohemians (like gay people) who tend to have high incomes and foster a vibrant, tolerant atmosphere.  To his credit, he realizes the folly of the city trying some sort of clumsy pandering.  If Milwaukee is really interested in courting the creative class (gay and otherwise) she need look no further than her smaller sister.  

It wasn't long ago that the differences between Milwaukee and Madison were really striking.  Milwaukee was hemorrhaging population to the suburbs as crime rose and manufacturing jobs left by the thousands.  Madison was riding the swelling tide of the knowledge economy and saw the university's research prowess parlayed into billions of dollars in development.

Milwaukee has largely learned that lesson.  Its four large universities have taken the lead in trying to turn a city built on brawn and beer into a brain trust but there was a severe caution a couple of years ago.

Conservatives didn't consider Wisconsin's marriage ban to be an economic development issue but they should have.  It was not an issue of great internal contention in Madison.  The UW - Madison was unequivocal about the chilling effects of writing bigotry into the state Constitution and, effectively, hanging a not-welcome sign out to an entire group of people, not that most people here needed to be told.  The city rejected the ban three to one. 

Milwaukee did not.  The ban's passage was all but assured when the state's largest metropolitan center voted for it by a slim margin.  

It's hard to cover up that kind of intolerance.  Milwaukee has a thriving gay community but, to really become known as a city that values the creative class, it has to demonstrate that it shares their values.

No, Virginia, there is no timeless architecture.

The State Journal released its paean to the State Street redesign today and there it was, in the photo caption: "timeless."  Specifically, the new look is said to create, "a more modern but timeless landscape."

What the hell does that mean?  My guess is that they're trying to encompass both the "sleek" buss shelters and the trite, bastard-victorian curlicues tacked onto the streetlamps and kiosks.  Nothing highlights State Street's waning status as the center of Madison counterculture like faux old-world charm.

"Timeless" is usually used as a code-word for old-fashioned.  It's symptomatic of the mistaken impression that things only started coming in and out of style within the last fifty years.  The solution is imagined to be a reversion to the architectural fashions of yore or, more likely, kitschy misinterpretations of them like the hulking "prairie style" pedestrian bridge that looms over East Washington Avenue.  Surely, Frank Lloyd Wright would've designed something just like that if someone had gotten him blind drunk and dulled all of his pencils.

There's no avoiding time.  The current wave of post-modern nostalgia will pass and, in twenty years, people will wonder who could've thought those lamp posts were a good idea.  What I think distinguishes tired old relics from cherished icons is the care that went into them.

The State Street redesign, with its design by committee, its lack of any sort of coherent theme and its upcoming pathetic excuse for public art (a friend referred to the chosen design as a horizontal phallus with a beaver) is unlikely to stand the test of time.  That's alright, too.  Time marches on and, if everything we built were worth saving, future generations wouldn't have anyplace to leave their own mark.