Banning Public Nudity

Guess where?

After the vote, disappointed protesters disrobed in City Hall, which is illegal. Once enacted, the ordinance would make it illegal for anyone over the age of 5 to expose his or her genitals in public. Exemptions will be made for parades and festivals held under a city permit.

WTDY Changes Format - Fires Staff

For all of those liberals who complain about not having “equal time” with conservative talk radio, here we have yet another case of liberal talk radio failing.

A shakeup at WTDY radio, 1670 AM and 106.7 FM, has left several broadcasters out of work, including longtime Madison radio personality John “Sly” Sylvester.

Walker right on Obamacare exchange

The new online format of the Daily News doesn’t allow me to post a link, so I’ll just post the whole column. Here’s my column from yesterday’s paper:

West Bend Daily News 11/20/2012, Page A06

Walker right on Obamacare exchange

Control will never really leave Washington

One of those truisms that applies in almost every area of life is that one should never accept responsibility for that which one cannot control. It applies in one’s job. It applies in one’s personal life. And it applies in governance. That is what is at the heart of Gov. Walker’s decision last week to decline to run a state health insurance exchange for Obamacare and defer to the federal government.

As part of the rules of Obamacare, online health insurance exchanges are to be set up for consumers to shop for a health insurance provider. Each state was given a choice as to how those exchanges could be implemented. The first option was for a state to set up its own exchange and manage it. The second option was for a hybrid model where the state acts on the behalf of the federal government. The third option was for the state to not do anything and defer to an exchange to be set up by the federal government.

The problem, as Gov. Walker rightly points out, is that all three options use the veneer of choice and free market principles to cover a colossal federal program that will only be controlled from dusty cubicles in Washington. Obamacare grants sweeping authority to the federal executive branch to set and change rules as they see fit. Regardless of the means by which the exchanges are implemented, the control of those exchanges will never leave Washington. For that reason, Gov. Walker did what any prudent governor should do and did not subject Wisconsin to be responsible for an exchange it would never control. It would be poor governance to put the taxpayers of Wisconsin in a situation where they would be forced to adhere to and pay for rules and programs yet unknown and unforeseen. Lest you think this is folly, the federal government has a long history of mandating things and making state taxpayers foot the bill for their largesse. It has happened with welfare, Medicaid, s pecial education, transportation and any of a host of other examples.

While Gov. Walker was correct in his decision for the reason he stated, there were other reasons for Wisconsin to let the federal government set up the exchange. First, the legal future of Obamacare is still unknown. While the Supreme Court has found a way to uphold the unconstitutional individual mandate, several aspects of the law are still being challenged in court. Those items being challenged include the employer mandate, the federally-facilitated exchange subsidy, the preventive care mandate, maintenance of effort, the origination cause challenge, the super-governmental independent payment advisory board and the legality of the delay in issuing formal rules and regulations.

With so many aspects of the law still working their way through the courts, it would be rash to charge ahead with creating the exchanges and the bureaucracy to support them without knowing how the law will look at the end of the tunnel. It would be like setting up your deer stand on someone’s land before knowing if you have permission from the property owner.

A second reason that Gov. Walker was sensible to let the federal government set up the exchange is purely practical. By law, the exchanges are supposed to be live and working by Oct. 1, 2013. That’s just 10 1/2 months away. Setting up a secure and redundant infrastructure with the web servers, databases, firewalls, management applications, monitoring applications, backups, telephony, power, cooling, staff, and everything else it will take to support hundreds of thousands – perhaps millions – of users is daunting enough to do from scratch in that little time.

But to add to the complexity and difficulty of the task, the federal government has been slow to absent in informing the states of the thousands of details they will require of the exchanges. The federal government has been derelict in issuing the necessary regulations so that the law can be implemented. There is the real likelihood that states that have begun to put together their exchanges under some assumptions will have those assumptions shattered when those regulations are finally issued. This will result in even more chaos.

While many of us opposed Obamacare from the start and continue to oppose it, the reasons for Wisconsin to defer to the federal government when it comes to the health insurance exchange has nothing to do with such opposition. It has everything to do with protecting the taxpayers of Wisconsin and good governance. Gov. Walker is to be congratulated for making this politically difficult decision in support of Wisconsin’s citizens.

(Owen B. Robinson, a West Bend resident, is a blogger who publishes at http://www.bootsandsabers com. .His column runs Tuesdays in the Daily News.)

Survivalist

Can you really call him a survivalist if he didn’t survive?

State troopers in Alaska are searching for an experienced survivalist from Wisconsin who’s been missing in the arctic for nearly two months.

31-year-old Thomas Seibold is originally from Germany, but has lived recently in Three Lakes, Wisconsin.  He was reported overdue when he missed a bush flight back to civilization on November 11th.

He was last seen in late September when he separated from an expedition, saying he wanted to spend time in nature.  There is a cabin in the remote part of Northwest Alaska where Seibold remained alone.

Round 2