Matthew Comments

I once worked at a public university that had a huge 'deferred maintenance' problem. Their major equipment was often 35 years old with an expected lifetime of 30 years. As a result, they were constantly doing repairs and paying overtime, but had little time to do preventive maintenance and little money to make pro-active investments in new equipment. In one dorm, water from bad showers on the upper floors started leaking into the main lobby, and the 'fix' was to drag out garbage cans to catch the water. I was told that repairing the plumbing itself was expensive so it was being figured into the "five-year budget plan." The garbage can fix went on for at least a year. A two-page spread in The Atlantic Monthly (March 2008, p 38-39) calls out our nation's growing infrastructure problem. This is a real 'tragedy of the commons' situation: individuals are not willing to give up more tax money if they don't see a real-time, personal benefit. At the sa...

John Torinus is a local Milwaukee CEO who writes pro-business articles in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel. I tend to appreciate them, and he's pretty reasonable. His latest article "Obama speech was full of anti-business rhetoric," intersects with my recent thoughts: will the Democratic nominee be reasonably pro-middle class, or wildly anti-business? Here's the editorial: http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=730879 And here's my breakdown of Torinus, right and wrong: Torinus is right that Obama's rhetoric lacks pragmatism on economic issues. He should learn from Hillary, who learned from Bill's partnership with business. Obama is busy riding his populist wave, but will find it difficult to govern effectively if he alienates the business community. Plus, there's reality: we can't run from free trade now, and our economy is largely based on "nothing more than a profit." Torinus is wrong to imply that political and religious leaders ar...