The cracks within the Democratic Party of Wisconsin continue to grow and promise to get ever more visible in this election year. In April 2003, Paul Soglin a six term Mayor of Madison, Lost to Dave Cieslewicz 29,717 to 28,528 after Dane County Executive Kathleen Falk endorsed Cieslewicz and appeared in his television ads. It is interesting that Soglin decided to begin 2006 blogging with a broadside against City Hall.
Inclusionary Zoning - A Lesson for the Left: This is about how a combination of decisions can lead to a series of events culminating in the economic decline of a city. All it takes is a few bad decisions, a lack of credibility and public officials who do not understand the externalities of their decisions. This is about unintended, but foreseen consequences.Paul indulges in a little historical oversight, pointing out the lesson that free people will move to places that offer them a better life. This mobility of free people is a factor municipal government planning can't make go away.
The flight to the suburbs was not white flight, it was middle class flight. It was just that most of the folks who could flee were white. Those middle class black families that could afford suburban life joined the migration in the 1970's. … With the jobs and the middle class, many cities made valiant efforts to revitalize their core, sometimes with success but always at a price. The cost to the tax basis for renewal was considerable and it was accompanied by gentrification, sometimes unavoidable.Hizzoner then gets specific about the danger of the progressives running Madison.
Starting in 2003 the city of Madison enacted three new laws, all admirable, all with lofty social goals, and all reflecting the values of its residents: The already stiff smoking ban ordinance was expanded to cover all public places including taverns. The city enacted a city minimum wage ordinance. The city enacted an IZ ordinance. While not enacted, there is also in development at one stage or another, city sick leave and health insurance proposals. There are specifics that are problematic with the IZ ordinance, but as a group these ordinances resulted in a sharp blow to the business community.Paul Soglin is a true believer Democrat but even he can tell that the alliance between the UW Madison Socialists like Joel Rogers and Patrick Barrett, and the Environmentalist Democrats like Cieslewicz and Falk, is dangerous to the economic health of Madison.
Now progressives, absent a fundamental understanding of the role of different levels of government, and unintended consequences they never contemplated, are destroying what they love.
