John Kinsman, the Family Farm Defender

Posted May 30, 2012 by meisen
Categories: Labor, Organic Farming/Local Food, Politics, The Progressive
Tags: , ,

Interviewing John Kinsman, the farmer activist  from Lime Ridge, was easily one of my more enjoyable assignments. The guy is fascinating, uniquely American in his personal history and  in committment to holding our country to its ideals. Here’s how the story in The Progressive magazine begins:

What could be more rare than cactus in a Wisconsin farmer’s wintry backyard? That would be the farmer himself if it’sJohn Kinsman. At age eighty-five, Kinsman has lived a singular life of activism.

This modest farmer from the Dairy State boondocks has traveled the world to stand with small farmers and indigenous people.

“You have to put your whole self into it,” he says of his approach. “You have to live what you’re saying.”

Kinsman has certainly done that. He’s locked arms with Native Americans like Winona LaDuke in their struggle. He founded the activist group Family Farm Defenders in 1994. He marched with his friend the French farm leader Jose Bové of anti-McDonald’s fame in “The Battle of Seattle” in 1999. He’s even sailed with Greenpeace.

How he managed all this while running a dairy farm in central Wisconsin, near tiny Lime Ridge, and raising ten children with his wife, Jean, may be the most improbable thing of all about Kinsman.

On a winter afternoon, Kinsman is just another Wisconsin farmer as he walks his 150 acres. He and Jean bought the worn-out, rock-strewn farm in the early 1950s not far from where his parents farmed. An early run-in with chemical pesticides put Kinsman in the hospital and converted him to organic farming. He points to the results.

Here are the pastures on which he rotationally grazes his milking herd of thirty-six Holsteins, the forested hills where he’s planted, literally, tens of thousands of trees, and the stand of fruit trees and bushes he’s grown around his house. And that patch of cacti—the prickly pear—was no exotic transplant but a stubborn native remnant from a warmer geological age in Wisconsin. Sort of like Kinsman himself.

Kinsman is a fourth-generation Wisconsin family farmer. His grandmother Samantha, who died at the age of ninety-seven in 1944, saw General Ulysses S. Grant when he visited Sandusky, Wisconsin. His dad was a “dyed-in-the-wool Republican who would vote for a dog if he were a Republican,” he says with a laugh. His own political awakening began in World War II, when on an Army train through Mississippi, he was upbraided for waving to the black people along the track.

To read more, please go here: http://www.progressive.org/family_farm_defender.html

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A Footnote on the Edgewater Subsidy

Posted May 11, 2012 by meisen
Categories: Development
Tags: , ,

Planning, the magazine of the National Planning Association, ran a piece in its April issue that paints Madison’s rejection of a $16 million subsidy for the Edgewater Hotel  expansion as an exercise of NIMBYism. Author Greg Flisram, who is  director of economic development  for the city of Green Bay, falls back on the  familiar complaint  that  the Madison review process is just too long, too complicated and prone to manipulation by people who do not want development in their backyard.

You can read his piece here:

http://www.wisconsindevelopment.com/files/nimby.pdf

Whatever the merit of that complaint, Flisram misses the elephant in the room. Here’s my letter to the editor:

Greg Flisram, in ridiculing Madison, Wis., for not subsidizing the $98 million Edgewater Hotel renovation, demonstrates the common failure of urban leaders to distinguish flashy real estate development from substantive economic development.

For a $16 million subsidy, the Edgewater project would deliver little: several hundred low-pay hospitality industry jobs and temporary employment for construction workers who largely live outside of Madison. As an economic catalyst, the project failed.

The Edgewater is boxed in by a residential historic district. It’s too isolated to reinforce Madison’s nationally known State Street shopping district or the city’s picturesque Capitol Square. Worse, it’s not close to the Frank Lloyd Wright-inspired Monona Terrace convention center, which sorely needs new adjacent hotel space.

Flisram seriously erred in saying the tax increment generated by the Edgewater construction would pay for the $16 million subsidy. In reality, repayment hinged on tapping the new taxes generated by a large mixed-use project near the UW-Madison campus.

When the assessor looked at the $98 million Edgewater renovation, he concluded that its underlying economics would only justify a $44.8 million assessment–less than half of its construction cost.

Flisram, who is Green Bay’s economic development director, needs a lesson in economics.

Here is the Edgewater column I wrote for Isthmus in September 2009:

http://www.thedailypage.com/isthmus/article.php?article=26981

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Handicapping the Recall Election

Posted April 9, 2012 by meisen
Categories: Development, Labor, Politics
Tags: , , ,

I offered my take on the upcoming gubernatorial recall election for the blogger David Blaska. You can find all of the responses here.

Here’s what I had to say:

            Who’s going to win the recall? I don’t know.

I will venture this: For that sliver of the electorate that is undecided, the recall won’t pivot on the union issue, but on the condition of the Wisconsin economy.

Scott Walker could have a big problem here. It’s not just that the job numbers were so bad in his first year, but the Republicans fumbled two key economic development issues–creation of a venture capital fund and writing viable mining legislation.

Who would have guessed they would be so inept on fundamental business issues?

Walker’s best hope requires a twist worthy of an O’Henry  short story: Will there be enough of an Obama economic recovery to lift the floundering Badger economy?

As for the Democrats, their chances of beating Walker will almost certainly decline once they pick a candidate. Their leading hopefuls are palookas–the scarred losers of  previous statewide races.

Perhaps party chair Mike Tate can persuade the Democratic candidate to put a brown paper bag over his or her head. It could help.

But wait…if  Herb Kohl miraculously changes his mind and runs, game over.

Everyone knows that the wild card is the John Doe probe. All hell breaks lose if Walker is indicted for the shenanigans that occurred while he was Milwaukee County executive.

What the Democrats need — and probably won’t get — is a business-savvy candidate like Kohl who understands the utter centrality of growing the Wisconsin economy.

Bar none, there is no more important issue in Wisconsin today.

Kevin Conroy, the biotech innovator (and the son of a former Democratic Michigan state senator) who briefly considered a gubernatorial run in 2010, might have filled the bill. But his Exact Sciences start-up is at a critical point of development.

Finally, given the chaos of Wisconsin politics, I don’t rule out an intervention by space aliens.

Bat-crazy weirdness–this is the new norm in Wisconsin politics.

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The Cultural Plan’s Small Thinking

Posted March 23, 2012 by meisen
Categories: TheDailyPage.com/Isthmus, Uncategorized
Tags: ,

Nine years in the making, Madison’s new cultural plan left me decidedly unimpressed in this Isthmus column:

Unfortunately the cultural plan illustrates what Madison gets wrong with a lot of plans: It took an exceedingly long time to produce. It prizes process over content. It reinforces the status quo. It avoids difficult issues. It slights for-profit ventures. And it’s self-absorbed in that Madison Portlandia way.

I go on to say that the plan fails to address the historic town/gown split in the local arts world and is far too parochial. What we need, I argue, is a Dane County cultural plan and not a Madison plan. Chalk it off to another example of how regionalism is prized in theory but not in practice.

To read more, please go here.

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Missed Opportunity

Posted January 22, 2012 by meisen
Categories: Development, Politics, TheDailyPage.com/Isthmus
Tags: ,

I make the case in this Isthmus column that establishing a passenger rail connection between Madison and Milwaukee  would  strengthen the state’s economy in the decades to come. Ain’t happening:

What was the single most important decision Gov. Scott Walker made in his first year of office? Hands down, the consensus judgment would be undermining the collective bargaining rights of public employees.

But 20 or 30 years from now? Wisconsinites will probably point to Walker’s fateful decision to reject an $810 million federal grant to build a passenger rail line connecting Madison and Milwaukee.

Chances are that the logic for the train will be evident to most everyone by then. The I-94 corridor linking Dane County with Milwaukee and Waukesha will likely be the state’s 21st-century economic engine. In turn, it will be a vital link in what technology booster Tom Still has called the “I-Q Corridor” — the 400-mile stretch of interstate connecting the heavyweight metropolises of Chicago and the Twin Cities.

“That corridor contains some of the nation’s leading research universities, well-educated tech workers and thriving tech-based companies at all stages of development,” Still, who’s president of the Wisconsin Technology Council, wrote a few years ago.

Now imagine an updated rail system carrying people from the Twin Cities to downtown Chicago in less than six hours — even faster than driving and on a par with a complicated airline connection.

Oops! Don’t consider it. That scenario is precisely what Walker killed when he gave back the $810 million — federal funding that would have paid the full capital costs of connecting Madison to Milwaukee.

Says Watertown Mayor Ron Krueger: “That decision will hurt the state of Wisconsin for decades to come.”

To read more, please go here. For a related column,check this. 

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Gov. Walker At One Year

Posted January 7, 2012 by meisen
Categories: Labor, Madison Magazine, Politics
Tags:

Madison Magazine was nice enough to ask  me to write an assessment of Gov. Scott Walker’s first year in office. Here’s how it begins:

On Nov. 19, 1955, the modern age of conservatism began with young Bill Buckley publishing the first issue of his new magazine, National Review. Famously, Buckley said in the mission statement that the magazine “stands athwart history, yelling Stop” to the liberalism that had dominated American government for the first half of the twentieth century.

Almost fifty-five years later, inspired by the same beliefs as Buckley, Gov. Scott Walker stood athwart Wisconsin history and yelled Stop to a century’s worth of progressive policies, as he announced his plans to break Wisconsin’s public employee unions as a way to rein in government spending.

The move ignited a cataclysm of protests that remain unabated today. And they helped frame the three paradoxes that mark Scott Walker’s tumultuous first year in office.

Go figure…

  • For years, Scott Walker had been a likable and gifted politician—a conservative rock star who could convince Democrats to vote for him for three terms as county executive of decidedly liberal Milwaukee County. Yet today, after pursuing a political agenda that is either remarkably courageous or spectacularly suicidal (maybe both!), the affable Walker finds himself dangerously underwater in the polls, disliked by most Wisconsinites and blamed for the state’s political turmoil.
  • Even if Walker is ignominiously recalled from office in 2012, he seems certain to be judged by historians as a transformative governor who changed the political DNA of Wisconsin. In short, public employee unionism will never be the same after Scott Walker, even if liberals sweep to power at the Capitol.
  • Walker is an unabashed pro-business governor who has proved surprisingly inept on key development issues. Bereft of savvy business advice in his inner circle, this corporate cheerleader fumbled the crucial venture capital issue, wasting months, and seems prisoner of a simplistic eighties-style of economic thinking. Meanwhile, his brash pledge to oversee creation of 250,000 jobs in his first term could be the petard on which his own political career is blown up.

Make no mistake: the paradoxical Mr. Walker is difficult to explain. The old Kris Kristofferson line —“He’s a walking contradiction, partly truth and partly fiction”—comes to mind.

Count me among the people who underestimated Walker….

To read more, please go here.

I also asked a cross-section of  Madisonians to offer their advice to the governor. Here’s what they had to say.

Former UW-Madison Chancellor had more to say than most people, and  this is it.

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Musically Speaking, 2011 In Review

Posted December 31, 2011 by meisen
Categories: Music

I saw upwards of 70 concerts in 2011. My favorites from Madison, Milwaukee and Chicago were recounted for the TheDailyPage. They include Allen Toussaint, Jeremy Denk, the North Mississippi Allstars, Mahler’s 2nd, Dave Alvin, Michael Feinstein, Ashia Grzesik and others. For details,  please go here.  Not included are fine shows  from farther afield in New York (cabaret great Barbara Carroll and country legend Cowboy Jack Clement) and in Paris (alto sax player Peter King and pianist Jean-Christophe Millot).

Here are my summaries of previous years:

2010

2009

2008

2007

2006

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Madison, Waukesha, Milwaukee–Partners?

Posted November 6, 2011 by meisen
Categories: Development, TheDailyPage.com/Isthmus
Tags: , , , ,

Transportation corridors are obviously prime for for growth and development, but it’s funny how seldom this plain as the-nose-on-your-face reality is ignored by decisionmakers. I wrote  about the synergy of Chicago and Milwaukee  along I-94 for Milwaukee Magazine. (Read it here.)  Now for Isthmus I look at the Madison-to-Milwaukee corridor.  The column begins:

Who knows, but just maybe Madison’s future can be found on the first floor of the historic American Exchange Bank on the Capitol Square. Nine info-tech start-ups — focused on everything from gaming to fashion to medical care — are housed in a business incubator run by an investment group known as 94Labs.

The name is telling, as it highlights the I-94 corridor connecting the Madison area with Milwaukee and Waukesha County — the state’s biggest metro area. Eighty miles from the Square, 94Labs runs another incubator in Milwaukee that’s equidistant to Marquette University, the Milwaukee School of Engineering and UW-Milwaukee.

The I-94 corridor “is a mega-region,” says 94Labs’ Greg Meier, using the phrase of celebrated urban theorist Richard Florida to describe the growing linkages of metro areas.

“The mega-regions of today perform functions that are somewhat similar to those of the great cities of the past — massing together talent, productive capability, innovation and markets,” Florida told a Tampa Bay paper earlier this year.

To read more, please go here:

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Madison Can Support The Best Artistic Talent

Posted September 26, 2011 by meisen
Categories: Development, Music, TheDailyPage.com/Isthmus

I’ve followed the Madison music scene for almost 35 years, and this is what I’ve learned: The scene rises and falls, rises and falls, but the baseline never advances and success is never built upon. Invariably the best talent packs up and moves on. In a cover story for Isthmus, I make the case this can change:

Let’s imagine another reality, a parallel universe where the Madison scene is so stimulating, so remunerative, so stone-cold happening that [sax player Patrick] Breiner felt compelled to stay. Imagine if the same could be said for Carl Johns, Nate Palan, Joy Dragland, Leo Sidran, Nika Roza Danilova, Alicia Smith and a long line of other inspired performers who packed up and left?

And what about Butch Vig, for crying out loud?

That’s the case I want to make here — that Madison can attract and hold the best artistic talent if it finally starts seeing music, and the arts in general, as an industry cluster that can bring wealth, jobs and renown to the city. Surprisingly similar, in other words, to the papermaking cluster in the Fox River Valley, the printing cluster in Milwaukee and the biotechnology cluster in Madison.

But here’s the catch: To turn an “art” into an “industry,” Madison needs a change in attitude and a change in strategy. I saw just this sort of thinking in Austin, Texas, almost a quarter-century ago.

In 1988 I worked for The Capital Times. The paper sent me down to Austin to figure out why another famous university town with a state capitol and a glorified tradition of progressivism and eccentricity had vaulted ahead of Madison in population growth and high-tech development.

I heard something in Austin that I never heard in Madison. City leaders and the go-getters in the chamber of commerce loved their music scene (outlaw country was still in full flower) and saw it in utterly pragmatic terms: It was a moneymaker and a draw for the creative class. The Austin chamber had a staff member dedicated to furthering the Austin music scene, doing everything from advocating for the city’s entertainment district, to pulling together the legal, marketing, financial services and recording infrastructure for musicians.

“It’s all part of our effort to diversify the economy,” a chamber exec told me.

I hope the story prompts a smarter discussion on how to promote the arts in Madison. To read more, please go here.

As for my bona fides: Well, I’m just a fan who sees a lot of music. Here’s a link to my 2010 year-end music wrap up. Links to summary stories for earlier years  can also be found there.

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New Media And The Capitol Protests

Posted September 18, 2011 by meisen
Categories: Media, Politics, Wisconsin Interest

I like writing about media. This piece for Wisconsin Interest, the triannual political journal I help edit, examines how new media  drove the Capitol protests and its coverage. The piece begins:

The revolution came to Madison in February, but not the one you think.

Sure, Gov. Scott Walker’s efforts to roll back a half-century of labor legislation and the ferocious liberal backlash were earthshaking events. But the outcome of this epic struggle awaits a last act.

No such uncertainty marks the digital revolution. New media played a crucial role in both organizing the Capitol protests and in covering them. The digital future arrived on the wings of text messages, cell-phone photos, flip-camera videos, Facebook posts and Twitter tweets.

Several thousand words later, I end by saying that while  the mechanics of politics has been transformed by new media, the nature of the our politics hasn’t been changed at all.

The rise of social media has had little impact on the polarization of American politics. No middle-of- the-road, “third way” movement has been texted into public consciousness.

If anything, the new technology has been deployed in the revival of a grand old creedal fight. Surging conservatives are rolling back 50 years of liberal Democratic programs in Wisconsin and even challenging the Progressive and New Deal shibboleths of earlier generations. New media has been conspicuously agnostic in this war, equally available to the left and right.

The irony is that the epochal rise of digital media may wind up triggering Gutenberg-like changes in our culture and economy, in the transmission and creation of news, and in the very nature of our intimate communications. But in the substance of our politics — well, not so much. At least for now.

To read the full report,  please go here.

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