Original Author:
paul soglin
I'm really pleased about this: next month Rep. Tammy Baldwin will receive the Jane E Lawton Commemorative Award from the National Association of Telecommunications Officers and Advisors (NATOA). NATOA presents the award annually to an elected official to recognize extraordinary service on behalf of local governments and communities throughout the United States. It was created in memory of the Honorable Jane E. Lawton, who served as Mayor of Chevy Chase, MD; Delegate to the Maryland State House; and President of...
Original Author:
jer45y@gmail.com (James Rowen)
At my high school graduation in Maryland a long long long time ago, the speaker delivered what may have been the shortest truth ever told to a assemblage of college-or-career-bound kids.
"Have a ball," said then Ag Secretary Orville Freeman (his daughter was in our senior class), "but pay your bills."
That should be the guiding message for five Wisconsin school districts whose managers gambled big, and lost, on risky ventures a few years ago, but are resisting facing the music.
The Whitefish Bay School district, we learn, is absorbing another credit downgrade because it got involved in high-risk, high-flying investments, with borrowed funds, that turned toxic.
West Allis-West Milwaukee and Waukesha join Whitefish Bay, Kenosha and Kimberly Area district, too - - and there seems to be no bailout on the horizon, save from the local property taxpayer.
Gambling with public funds should have been a non-starter, but like a lot of homeowners and starry-eyed investors, these few school boards, their staffs or consultants got irrationally exuberant (read: greedy).
With the removal of holds by Kansas Senators Brownback and Roberts allowing the confirmations of Army Secretary John McHugh and others, one would hope this would end the nonsense holds on Obama nominations. Sadly, no.
The administration's nominee to head the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, Thomas Perez, has been held up for six months:
Perez is something of a progressive's dream appointment -- he's fought for minority and worker rights, stood up to the mortgage-lending industry when few others predicted how their unscrupulous practices would lead to economic disaster, and perhaps most important, he's a career civil-rights attorney who is familiar with how the civil-rights division is supposed to work -- with an emphasis on the expertise of career attorneys, not the agendas of the political appointees who supervise them.
Sounds pretty qualified, don't you think? So what's the problem?
The President spoke to the University of Maryland yesterday pitching his health care message and specifically tailoring it to young people. He mentioned the mandate that would require insurance compainies that cover children to do so until they are 26 to ensure that all young people will still be covered even throughout their educations and until they are able to get jobs that ... ideally ... will have plans of their own.
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