"Madison do-gooders haggled over shootings police stopped."

Writes Chris Rickert in The Wisconsin State Journal.

Madison’s mayor and City Council spent valuable time this spring and summer feuding among themselves and with local activists over how to respond, ahem, quickly to a rash of shootings.

Madison Police Chief Mike Koval on Aug. 9 announced plans to round up those suspected in the violence and two weeks later announced that the shootings had largely stopped — at least for now....

Meanwhile, the latest incarnation of Madison’s softer-side approach to alleviating violence — a 15-point-plan by a group called the Focused Interruption Coalition — is just getting underway, more than a year after it was proposed...

I have no idea whether the people targeted for this kind of non-law-enforcement attention have enough better angels left for the attention to make any difference. These are people, after all, who apparently haven’t been helped in any meaningful way by any of the millions in donated and taxpayer dollars spent every year on welfare, community development and educational programs....

I got there through David Blaska, who writes "Welcome to the dark side, Chris Rickert."

[Rickert] is throwing off the Madison liberal torpor. Renouncing the creed of collectivism. Escaping the Cult of Victimhood.... Brother Rickert, you will be called a racist. Comes with the territory.... Yes, Chris Rickert, you are ruined in Madison.

Blaska observes that the on-line headline — my post title — does not appear in the print version. There, it's — incredibly — "Peer support, policing not either-or."

"To be clear, I am in agreement with the Madisonians who think the Dalai Lama’s Buddhist teachings and practices provide a valuable perspective on compassion, achieving happiness and American culture."

"Even though it’s far from clear that the Dalai Lama and Buddhism make anything like a clean break from the gender-role-bound, homophobic and rule-obsessed approach to faith that so many spiritually yearning Madison liberals reject.... Clearly, the Dalai Lama and Madison like each other, but the Tibetan monk and meditation expert doesn’t always seem to check all the politically correct boxes usually required for Madison’s approval...."

Chris Rickert comments on The Dalai Lama's 10th visit to Madison.

The 1,089-seat venue is sold out for 2 shows — with tickets priced at $80 to $200.

A Madison, WI proposal to authorize community street painting projects to "bring people together."

We're not talking about water soluble paint, but permanent paint jobs, the equivalent of murals, but on the horizontal surface that cars drive on. The alderwoman who proposes the new ordinance — Marsha Rummel — got the idea from Portland, Oregon, "where community members paint an intersection to give it a sense of place and create a public square."

There would be a permit process, including a petition "indicating approval from at least 60 percent residents, businesses and non-residential properties within a 200-foot radius of the proposed location"  and "assurances for the city that hold the design's applicant responsible for maintenance of the painting and requires them to have insurance." (I'm quoting the Cap Times article, not the ordinance, so I don't know whom to blame for the irritating ambiguity.)

"You can't just say you want to come in and do this. It needs to be maintained over time. Paint fades. It needs to be repainted from time to time, just as we go and repaint traffic lines," said Arthur Ross, the city's pedestrian-bicycle coordinator.

Which is why it's obviously a terrible idea.

"What it really is is a community building activity. It gets people out of their houses and working on something together," Ross said.

And what about when it breaks them apart because it's ugly, it makes the neighborhood look trashy, and it's not properly maintained.  I loathe these government dreams of bringing people together. Leave us alone! I know it's Madison, but people have their own private ways of getting together.

"[T]he hypocrisy of pillorying a guy for using his employer’s equipment to grow marijuana..."

"... while his employer offers training in how to create a pair of substances — including one with its own mind-altering properties — that together probably do more damage to the state’s health and well-being than marijuana ever could."

Wisconsin State Journal columnist purports to detect "hypocrisy" after a University of Wisconsin researcher is arrested for growing marijuana in his university lab, when the university teaches beer brewery and has a big ice cream making plant.

Fat-choked dairy products in general are a focus of much study at the university, which regularly provides technical assistance to Dairy State dairy producers.

Given its status as the drunken-driving capital of the United States, and federal statistics that put its obesity rate of 27.7 percent, Wisconsin’s love affair with beer and ice cream might be far bigger threats than a couple joints.

Care to think about the Wisconsin economy without beer and dairy products? And the notion that more marijuana would help us out of our obesity... I'm having trouble with that line of reasoning. Wouldn't you keep eating or eat even more? Seems like your argument demands a focus on the drugs that make you skinny....

What drugs make those skinny rocks stars dreadfully skinny?...  I've always assumed that the drugs make them forget to eat, or maybe they can't afford food or the drug drives down appetite. What drugs do this?...  I want to add some authentic detail into a play I'm involved with....

The classic rock hard drug is heroin, which would definitely cause that gaunt look, and coke would be the 2nd choice. I would research those drugs...

Google "coke bloat". Makes you skinny, except in the face and tummy....

Heroin. If you're talking about the standard Janis-Joplin-oh-my-god-she-looks-like-a-skeleton-but-damn-she's-still-kinda-hot thing, it's heroin. If you're going for the where-are-her-teeth-and-what's-that-purple-thing-on-her-lip thing, methamphetamine.

So, there you have it. What you want is: heroin. Bonus: You'll be growing a very pretty flower!



Okay, all you nonhypocritical University of Wisconsinites: Cultivate your gardens!

Have you heard about the health insurance plan that covers your fresh, organic fruits and vegetables?

It's real!

Last summer, I paid a whole dollar for weekly half-boxes of fresh, organic fruits and vegetables as part of a community supported agriculture program. My health insurer paid the rest.

But wait, there's more:

A meditation-based stress-reduction class I took last year also was eligible for reimbursement...

Meditation! You know what else is stress-reducing? Sex. Why don't health insurers cover that? And I don't mean birth control and Viagra. I mean sex itself. Isn't that where we are going? Sex is a health matter. Insurance is going universal, with extensive government-imposed coverage requirements. I think those who have to pay for sex — people with various (undoubtedly health-related) limitations that preclude their acquiring it free — should be reimbursed.

Yes, you have to legalize prostitution first, but the prospect of something else that people like becoming eligible for government-mandated insurance ought to provide the incentive for legalization. As with marijuana, legalization is achieved through medicalization, and there's never a stage where you're simply free and able to seek pleasure. The old restraints will be removed only for the purpose of locking on the new restraints. You will have sex and drugs, when it's your medicine and when you can be made to pay for everyone else's.

Just wait!

I wrote all that without reading the rest of the column, so I'm amused to see what the columnist — Chris Rickert — actually did with the groundwork that got me going. He goes from meditation to sex too:

You don't have to look far to find that sex — at least the kind of sex society values, i.e., that occurring in loving, mature, committed relationships — is a partner with wellness.... Depending on which studies you believe, sex encourages intimacy, in some cases might reduce depression, provides good exercise, reduces pain and may even reduce the risk of cancer.

If a health insurer is going to buy its customers kohlrabi and celeriac to encourage healthy eating, why shouldn't it buy them contraception to encourage more healthful sex? In the end, everyone wins.

He'd just buy contraception at this point, not an actual sex worker's treatments. That seems so unfair. Them that's got shall get. Those with benefits get more benefits. When will government level the playing field?

A city-wide horseback riding event supposedly "fits with this entirely laudable notion that streets don't have to be the sole province of gas-guzzling, carbon-emitting cars and trucks."

According to Chris Rickert, contemplating something like the "Ride the Drive" bike-riding event where major streets in Madison are closed to cars so people can bike all over the streets (instead of just in the bike lanes, which are everywhere, and the bike trails, which are excellent).

But horses? Do horses even do well on concrete? And riding horses can't possibly be more energy efficient and clean than cars.

Fortunately Rickert has a brother-in-law who knows about horses. (He's a farrier.) He tells him that shod horses slip on pavement. Yes, leave the poor beasts alone.

Horse the Drive... what a horrendous idea. And yet... so Madison. There's this restless need to do things... to add amenities. Hey, let's have a trolley! Proposals spring from fuzzy heads. Pure romanticism. It seems environmental. It's environmental and about nature and a love of animals. Except if you look at the actual facts, it doesn't align with any of the values it resonates with inside your head.