Tag Archives: Barack Obama

How green is Obama? Bad Doyle request will tell

Posted on by
2

Gov. Jim Doyle wants President-Elect Barack Obama to send $97 million Wisconsin’s way to speed up expansion of North-South I-94.

Obama has promised to push green jobs with any stimulus package Congress approves — Doyle’s request for highway money is not — absolutely not — a green jobs promoter. The freeway expansion project will destroy wetlands and increase flooding. It will increase air pollution. It will increase the risk of asthma and other diseases, especially for kids. It will cost $1.9 billion (although it is very strange that the price of the proposed Milwaukee-Madison rail line has increased 25% to 50% over two years and the price of the I-94 project has not budged) and not do much at all to improve the employment situation in the city. In the long run, in fact, it will further divide jobs from workers, and leave many workers with no way to get to their jobs. And it will not reduce congestion.

So how green is Obama? If he approves this boondoggle, not very green at all.

Busalacchi to Obama administration!!?

Posted on by
1

The word “progressive” is rolling over in the dictionary.

WisDOT Secretary Frank Busalacchi, one of the most concrete-pourin’, greenhouse-gas promotin’, water-pollutin’, unimaginative secretaries of transportation around, allegedly is under consideration for a post in the Obama administration. Busalachhi, somehow, has built himself a reputation nationally as a rail advocate, although he really sucks at it here in his home state.

From Traffic World:

Also under consideration are two members of the National Surface Transportation Policy and Revenue Study Commission, Steve Heminger and Frank Busalacchi.

Heminger, named to the commission by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, is executive director of the San Francisco Bay Area’s Metropolitan Transportation Commission and once was a congressional staffer.

Transportation industry sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Busalacchi, Wisconsin state secretary of transportation since 2003 and a former secretary-treasurer for the Teamsters local in Milwaukee, is a more likely candidate for head of the Federal Railroad Administration.

Selecting Busalacchi for anything wouldn’t be a move to the right by Obama; it would be a move to lunacy. How many times has Busalacchi embarrassed his boss, Gov. Doyle? Are we talking about the $685,000 Marquette Interchange web site? The open records violations? Let’s put that all on the national stage and see how it plays.

The last Bush-backer

Posted on by
Reply

My sister and I stopped in a West Allis pet store yesterday so she could buy a teddy bear dog (anyone looking for a pet can get a really good deal now because economic distress had led a whole lot of people either decide not to buy a pet or to give up the ones they had).

Anyway, as we were checking out with Harley the teddy bear, the clerk asked us if we liked the new president.

I said yes, I did, and she said she preferred President Bush, that she did not like the new president. I told her I did not want to have this conversation with her. She said the new president wanted to take away everyone’s guns and she especially did not like that he wanted to ban all hunting totally.

Yup, Bush still has backing among people who do not know what the hell they are talking about.

Obama wins big in Story Hill

Posted on by
Reply

President-elect Barack Obama won 59.2% of votes cast on election day in the ward that includes Story Hill, according to the City Election Commission.

Results of absentee ballots cast in Ward 282 were not available late Wednesday afternoon because absentee ballots still were being counted.

Barack Obama, left; Ward 282, right. Click on the images to see larger versions.

Obama, the Democratic contender, won 394 election-day votes in Ward 282, while Republican challenger John McCain won 259 votes, or 38.9% of the vote.

Libertarian candidate Bob Barr and independent candidate Ralph Nader won four votes each. Constitution Party candidate Chuck Baldwin won three votes, and there were two write-in votes, according to the Election Commission.

There were a total of — weird, spooky music, please — 666 votes cast in Ward 282 on election day.