The Wisconsin Covenant-Only in Doyle's Mind

Owen of Boots and Sabers has his latest column in the West Bend Daily News online for your reading enjoyment, aptly titled "Wisconsin Covenant equal to snake oil". In it, he points out that to date, the Wisconsin Covenant exists only in the mind of Governor Jim Doyle, and yet that has not stopped him from signing up high school students all across the state. In about two years, it's going to be time to pay the piper, and if Owen is right, we're going to get stuck with the bill for this thing one way or another unless someone puts a stop to this. JB Van Hollen, are you listening?

Yet Another Reason...

why I don't want the government playing a bigger role in my life. Long story short, the Los Angeles zoning office is telling the good professor that he can't get the information he needs to get a permit to add an addition because, according to their records... the house doesn't exist!

Which, of course, led him to the next natural question; if the house doesn't exist, why do I have to pay taxes on it? That, of course, is a different department.

Yet another strike against Healthy Wisconsin, or any other government-run program...

HT: Hugh Hewitt

(Un)Healthy Wisconsin

I've posted my opinion of this elsewhere, in the comment sections of the blogs I frequent, but I wanted to post my opinion here as well, mostly because it gives me more space to speak my mind. And, as usual, my opinion is formed largely from my previous experiences with state government.

For those who don't know, I currently work in a job that involves dealing with the DMV on a fairly regular basis. The ministry I work for accepts vehicle donations, and a good number of the cars we bring in are sold at auction, which requires that titles be signed over to us, then from us over to a dealer, who in turn sells a vehicle to a consumer, who then titles the vehicle in their name. All seems pretty neat and tidy, right? Not so fast.

Just the other day, I had a gentleman in my office who had donated a vehicle to us last year, who received a notice from the Kenosha Police Department that his vehicle had been impounded, and is going to be destroyed if he doesn't pick it up. Problem is, the car in question is the one he donated last year. LAST YEAR. TWELVE MONTHS AGO. And the DMV STILL has the car registered to him. Twelve months later.

This is not an isolated incident. Earlier this year I had to get us off the hook for a traffic accident, because the DMV is behind schedule, and an insurance company went after a donor. Last month I got a call from a donor who was getting parking tickets from the city of Chicago on a car she donated last year. I could go on.

The state is woefully inefficient, and they show no signs of changing. And there are people that want the state administering our health care? No, thank you. Mind you, I'm not saying the current system is perfect, but I am saying this is definately NOT the solution.

Laundry's Done!

A message similar to that one could be popping up on the cell phones of students of Dickinson College in Pennsylvania, according to a story from Fox News. The system allows students to pay for loads of laundry with their ID cards, and the system will notify them via text message when their laundry is done. They can also find out where any available machines are on campus, and can receive a message to let them know when and where a machine is available. I almost wish I had something like this at home.