Editor to GOP leggies: Get serious

I can't recall ever agreeing with the political sentiments of any Wisconsin State Journal editor (even when I worked there for a few years in the 1970s), since the paper has always skewed heavily to the right.

But there is a first time for everything. And James Hopson nails it in this column, entitled, "GOP wasting time on nonsense:"

Here's some advice for the Republican leadership in Wisconsin's Legislature: get serious.

When I look at the legislation proposed by the Senate and Assembly Republicans I see an apparent obsession with matters trivial, wrongheaded or positively harmful to the well being of Wisconsin combined with a conspicuous avoidance of legislation on issues of actual importance.

Let's review the dog's breakfast of bad legislation the majority has recently attempted to foist on the state:

Concealed carry. Just what we need - our streets, shopping malls and workplaces thronged with citizens packing heat. I'm sure there are worse ideas than this, but I can't think of one right now.

A ban on same sex marriage. Already illegal. This is a frivolous waste of time.

Limits on stem-cell research. Great idea. Let's strangle one of the state's growth industries in its crib.

A prohibition on University Health Services dispensing morning after contraceptives to coeds. Guaranteed to stop premarital sex dead in its tracks. Not.

All manner of university-bashing proposals. Making sport of those liberal goofballs at UW-Madison surely gets lots of laughs back in the home districts of these geniuses. But does harming one of the nation's great research institutions and an important contributor to Wisconsin's economic growth really make this state better or more successful in any way?

These misadventures in social engineering are purely political theater, intended only to score political points with conservative voters. They do not address in any useful way the real problems Wisconsin faces.

If the Republicans actually want to accomplish something useful, I'll suggest a couple of topics they could work on:

School funding. School districts all over the state are squeezed by a school funding formula that permits costs to grow at a consistently higher rate than revenues. Destructive and unsustainable. How about using your legislative majority and some of your political capital to fix this?

Corrections. Your tough-on-crime legislation and mandatory sentencing laws have yielded a prison population three times larger than neighboring Minnesota's and an incarceration rate for African-Americans that is the worst in the United States. This is a scandal for a historically enlightened state like Wisconsin, and it costs a fortune to maintain.

And when you've fixed those two, come back and I'll give you some additional assignments.

But with the cynical leadership squandering their time and political capital on right wing nonsense, I'm not going to hold my breath.

The Amtal Rule,, one of the new blogs in town, has an interesting take on GOP legislative priorities, too.