Milwaukee Point 08

‘Tis the season to — well, to turn your back on your fellow man, apparently

Cudahy has been in the news lately because their Plan Commission rejected an attempt by a volunteer group to open a homeless shelter. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported that one of the Commissioners (unidentified) called homeless people “Stinky” and “Drunk” and suggested they be sent to Milwaukee.

Cudahy is a south-side suburb of Milwaukee with a preponderance of white, Polish, Christian, blue collar residents. In 2009, a couple of drunken brothers, Cudahy residents, shot a military-grade green star cluster marker flare into the Patrick Cudahy Meatpacking Plant in 2009, causing $50 million in damage, making hundreds homeless and putting more than 1,000 people out of work. Both got a suspended sentence, three years of probation and 500 hours of community service. But if someone is a mentally ill substance abuser, AND sleeping under the freeway instead of a house they (or their parents) paid good money for, well — that’s a different story. Not in my backyard, pal.

The good news is, local churches rallied together to set up an informal revolving life-line of “All-Night Prayer Meetings” to give people a place to sleep (and maybe pray) during our notably hellacious winter storms. I worked for a Methodist church in New Jersey that regularly participated in round-robin homeless hosting, and I’m glad to see the idea touching down here in Wisconsin — It takes guts to do what’s right, just because it’s right. As an atheist, I’ve faced that issue for many years, and I hope this Holiday Season will incite others to donate time, money and effort to the churches involved, including Tippecanoe Presbyterian Church, and Nativity of the Lord Jesus Parish

Your cows are on fire, Milwaukee!

So are your schools, your infrastructure, your tax base and your relationship with the future. Your fourth grade African-American boys have the lowest reading scores in the nation!

Leap into the 21st Century, Milwaukee!

It used to be, parents didn’t have to think about college for their kids. Hey. Allis Chalmers is hiring. Get a factory job. And them college guys are just a bunch of snotty assholes, right? Right? They should quit trying to be so smart.

The truth is, being dumb can bite you in the ass. You’ll get parted from your money faster than a $50 hooker can take off her underpants. It’s in the paper every day–someone doesn’t do their job right, and no one is smart enough to notice. Some creepy pervert is in a position of power and, when the truth comes out, everyone goes, “Jeez. He seemed like a regular guy, ainit?”

When some gubbmint agency says, Okay, guys. We’ll help you out with money to build a modern train line so you can tie into the rest of the Midwest, ship products and get jobs. People go, “WTF do we need a train for? We got cars and we can drive to Madison if we want to go? Anyways, give us back our tax money so we can spend it on what WE want.”

That would be okay if Wisconsinites proved they can be relied upon to use their own money wisely. Say they were to charge higher taxes for the things that hurt us, like beer and cigarettes. Say, they made people wear motorcycle and bicycle helmets, and treated OWI like a crime so the public doesn’t have to pick up the overages when folks get drunk and drive into a tree. Say,–oh, I don’t know–say they stopped acting like a bunch of farm hands and got out a little. Maybe, at least, pretended they want to be part of the rest of the world.

We could be so great, Milwaukee. We’ve got potential. Put down the remote; Step away from the beer; Be smart and go for it!

Milwaukee’s proactive response to new federal street sign rules will cost $1.4M (eventually)

Tight-fisted residents expressed outrage and dismay (including Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel columnist Jim Stingl) at plans to comply with MUTCD’s new state-mandated guidelines.

City Public Works commissioner, Jeff Mantes, announced plans to replace street signs that don’t meet the new rules for readability and reflectivity. Not right away, mind you–The effort is spaced out over four years. And not all signs—just the ones that were going to be replaced anyways because they are getting old. New, more readable signs that you can see in the dark. Wow!

Online posters seem fixated on the cost ($1.4M!) and the new font rules (upper AND lower case!). People who never go anywhere and don’t read might not realize that Milwaukee has actually done a fairly good job keeping up with trendy signage updates (Signs installed since the 1990′s already meet the guidelines). They may not realize that New York City will have to spend $27M to replace every freakin’ sign in the five boroughs because they never replace any signs, unless a taxi, truck or water main bursting knock one down.

The new sign style will cost the same as the old font style, so what’s the problem? Perhaps the City Department of Public works shouldn’t have sent an email out announcing plans to spend $350,000 a year to replace signs that were going to be replaced anyway at the same cost. Sounds more like a budget line item adjustment to me.

The perfect cultural meme for Milwaukee’s infatuation with fried foods and beer.

I’m not uncomfortable with the concept as much as I am that it appeared as “news” on the front page of The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, October 1, 2010.

Simple enough concept: freeze beer with gelatin to make solid balls. Roll into raviolis made with half crushed pretzels to keep the alcoholic goodness in. Fry for 20 seconds. Serve with so many side sauces you can’t taste anything and–Ta Da. “Fried beer’ worthy of “Uncle Moe’s Family Feedbag”.

It’s not an inherently pathetic concept. It’s pathetic, of course, but the pathos blooms because this is not an original idea. It was introduced at the Texas State Fair this year–the undisputed Everest of weird fried foods.

But wait, isn’t this only a little pathetic, you may ask. Well, how about this for a LOT pathetic? The creator, Mark Zable, a Texas State Fair concessionaire who spent three years developing fried beer is copyrighting his invention, (well, wouldn’t you?). The Journal-Sentinel knew that, as did Chef Brian Frakes of “Miller Time Pub” at the Hilton Milwaukee City Center (a big advertiser with the JS).

Front page news? Unbiased reporting? Uh, No.

Encouraging gastronomic depravity and advertising revenue? Uh, yeah.

I reported on the concept of Wisconsin fetish for weird fried foods previously: Wisconsin State Fair 2010: Crispy-fried and served on a stick and Updates on Wisconsin’s love of “Food-on-a-stick.

Don’t we deserve more than this?

True, newspapers are going out of fashion, but I’m an old-school newspaper girl. The New York Times is my current favorite, but I have a soft spot for the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel.

No one admits to liking it. As a former newspaper reporter, I can see the internal workings and I realize why the season finale seems to be imminent. The factors are apathy and ignorance (bet you thought I’d say “money”? Well money congregates in the wake of interest, like seagulls following a fishing boat.)

PROBLEM ONE: People don’t subscribe. People don’t read. They are content to spend “Just ten minutes of your day” (recent TV news jingle) to get the bare minimum of information (Is the sky falling? Has a giant sinkhole appeared anywhere? Has “Fish Fry and a Flick” been canceled due to weather conditions?). Hey! It’s free, right?

PROBLEM TWO: It’s written like a bunch of high school journalism students got drunk one day and said “Hey, I know, let’s start a newspaper, eh?”

That brings us back to money. No one with newspaper experience will come to work for the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, on purpose, to be a reporter. It doesn’t pay enough and it’s not a resume slam bang. However, that’s no excuse for shoddy workmanship, for not having copy of Strunk & White next to your computer, for not reading the national papers, for sloppy editing.

Here’s today’s example:

September 29, 2010 Local Section “Report Card on Charitable Giving” page B1; headline “Nonprofit outlook still dismal”

Cut to jump page, 6B headline “Charities slightly more optimistic”. Say, huh? Which is it, dismal or optimistic? Sloppy, sloppy sloppy.

Hundreds of thousands of people are being laid off by the census bureau. Whether or not they qualify for  unemployment? It’s an alchemical art.

Even though federal employees are covered for unemployment insurance under the Unemployment Compensation for Federal Employees program and you don’t even have deductions taken out to pay for it, they are bound by the eligibility rules of the state they worked in.

In Wisconsin, where I worked for the census bureau from March til August, the rules are really arcane. Now pay close attention:

Benefit amounts and eligibility are based on the first four of the last five quarters prior to the start of your claim — unless you don’t have enough wages to qualify for a claim based on that formula, in which case, you use the ‘alternate base period‘ method. The alternate period is the four most recently completed calendar quarters prior to the start of your claim,  where your wages must be at least 35 times your weekly benefit rate AND your wages equal at least 4 times your weekly benefit rate outside the highest quarter.

Got it?

It took four phone calls with wait times of up to 40 minutes to determine that I need to reapply in October (when the next quarter begins) to have my last quarter (July and August) considered as part of the formula.

And as my passionately-right-wing Republican,  Fox-News-Network-loving Mom noted: “What are people supposed to do if they need that money to live?